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THE 


Constructive  Interests 


OF 


Children 


BY 


ERNEST  BECKWITH  KENT,    Ph.D. 


75^3^ 


PUBLISHED  BY 

TCcacbcrs  Colleae,  Columbia  Xllnirersits 

NEW  YORK 
1907 


V903 


LB 


CONTENTS 


PREFACE 

I.    THE  FREE   CONSTRUCTIVE  WORK  OF  .50  SCHOOL  CHIL- 
DREN 


Introduction 

Classification 

List  of  articles,  boys   . 

Changing  interests 

The  vitality  classification 

Gift  motives 

The  more  stable  interests 

List  of  articles  by  classes 

Statistics  of  girls'  work 

Statistics  of  materials 


PAGE 
I 

16 
22 

24 
26 
27 
29 
32 
34 
41 


II.     THE   EARLY  INTERESTS  AND   EDUCATION   OF   72   TAL- 
ENTED ENGINEERS 

Introduction 44 

Method  of  tabulation 49  . 

Environment 51 

Extent  of  mechanical  environment 53 

Fathers'  occupations 57 

Special  interests  and  abilities 57 

Ability  in  school  work 58 

Relative  preference  for  studies 60 

Constructive  work  during  boyhood 62 

Opinions  regarding  the  value  of  manual   training  ....  70 

Educational  applications 73 

Summary 75 


PREFACE 


The  school's  obligation  is  no  doubt  to  society  first,  and 
only  afterward  to  the  child;  so  that  the  curriculum  in  its  broader 
outlines  must  be  determined  with  a  view  to  what  society  will 
require  rather  than  to  what  will  please  the  child.  But  in  devel- 
oping the  details,  interests  need  to  be  carefully  reckoned  with. 
This  is  especially  important  with  all  of  the  more  expressional 
subjects,  whether  manual  training,  design  or  English  composi- 
tion. Society  is  certainly  demanding  acquaintance  with  indus- 
trial life,  and  any  mere  tool  practice,  no  matter  how  formal, 
which  will  give  the  pupil  some  notions  about  industrial  life  and 
his  fitness  for  it,  is  probably  worth  having  in  the  school.  But 
practice  in  inventing  is  worth  infinitely  more — in  inventing  new 
uses  for  old  tools  and  machines,  new  economics  of  material,  new 
applications  of  old  principles.  A  child's  inventiveness  is  never 
either  trained  or  tested  except  while  he  is  deep  in  some  absorb- 
ing problem.  The  following  study  was  a  quest  for  additional 
data  upon  the  question  of  what  problems  are  the  most  likely  to 
prove  absorbing  to  children  in  the  latter  half  of  the  elementary 
school  period.  It  is  the  writer's  hope  that  some  of  the  sugges- 
tions which  it  developed  may  be  found  applicable  and  helpful  in 
practice. 


/•■tr~^* 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE *^lNfEkESTS  OF  CHILDREN 


I    THE    FREE  CONSTRUCTIVE  WORK  OF  150 
SCHOOL  CHILDREN 

Introduction 

A  large  number  of  studies  upon  children  have  given  data 
which  bear  upon  the  subject  in  hand.  The  instincts  and  reac- 
tions of  infancy  and  early  childhood  have  been  studied  intensely 
by  Baldwin,  Perez  and  many  others.  Studies  by  Bryan,  Burk, 
and  Hancock  have  traced  the  general  course  of  motor  develop- 
ment and  have  shown  the  degrees  of  motor  control  normal  to  the 
different  stages  of  childhood.  Children's  plays  and  games,  as 
their  most  spontaneous  form  of  expression,  make  the  best  single 
index  to  the  general  trend  of  interests  during  any  given  period 
and  extended  reference  to  certain  studies  of  these  will  be  neces- 
sary as  we  proceed.  Most  directly  valuable  of  all  is  Dewey's 
account  of  the  constructive  interests  which  grow  out  of  three 
successive  mental  attitudes  or  modes  of  attention.^ 

James  makes  constructiveness  a  special  instinct    which   he 

says  is  as  genuine  and  irresistible  in  man  as  in  bee  or  beaver. 

"Whatever  things  are  plastic  to  his  hands,  those  things  he  must  remodel 
into  shapes  of  his  own,  and  the  result  of  the  remodelling,  however  useless  it 
may  be,  gives  him  more  pleasure  than  the  original  thing.  The  mania  of 
young  children  for  breaking  and  pulling  apart  whatever  is  given  them  is 
more  often  the  expression  of  a  rudimentary  constructive  impulse  than  of  a 
destructive  one."- 

However  important  this  constructive  instinct  may  be,  it 
clearly  does  not  in  any  sense  explain  or  constitute  the  motive  of 
the  bulk  of  that  construction  which  forms  so    large  a  part  of  the 

'^Elementary  School  Record^  Vols.  1-9 

Direct  attention,  focused  wholly  upon  the  outgoing  activity  itself; 
Voluntary  attention,  directed  to  the  accomplishment  of  certain  prac- 
tical ends; 
Reflective  attention,  concerned  with  ends  which  persist  in  the  form 
of  intellectual  problems. 
"^Principles  of  Psychology^  Vol.  2,  p.  426. 


lo  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

world's  work.  While  constructive  instincts  may  determine  in 
a  measure  which  men  ai>e  |p  work  in  constructive  lines,  the 
actual  motive  for  doing  the  work  is  an  ulterior  one;  it  is  the 
utility  of  the  things  made  and  their  power  in  satisfying  human 
needs  that  causes  their  production.  In  other  words,  most  con- 
struction is  carried  on  as  work  and  it  is  only  within  the  limits 
of  construction-play  that  we  can  class  the  constructive  instinct 
as  an  important  motive.  But  these  instinctive  activities  to 
which  James  refers  are  constantly  observed  in  small  children 
and  we  need  to  trace  through  the  years  of  childhood  the  gene- 
ral development  of  constructive  motive  from  this  instinctive 
one  to  a  motive  which,  having  little  to  do  with  processes  and 
materials  as  such,  rests  in  the  distant  purpose  to  be  subserved 
by  the  product. 

Between  these  two  extremes  we  may  distinguish  two  inter- 
mediate stages.  Following  the  instinctive  activities  with 
materials  comes  a  time  when  certain  fornjs  of  construction  are 
attempted  by  the  child  not — or  at  least  not  wholly — because  of 
the  "besoin  de  creer"^  but  from  mere  impulse  to  imitate  the 
activities  of  adults.  This  results  in  his  reproduction  of  con- 
structive activities  among  others— possibly  more  of  these  than 
of  most  others,  but  if  so  not  necessarily  because  of  reinforcement 
by  "constructive  instinct. "  For  while  this  may  count  some- 
what, the  presence  of  certain  tangible  and  dramatic  elements  in 
the  constructivities  of  his  elders  would  sufficiently  explain  the 
partiality  which  he  shows  for  them  at  certain  times. 

Gradually,  however,  this  imitation  construction  ceases  to 
satisfy  and  the  construction  comes  to  be  carried  on  for  definite 
ends,  though  not  ordinarily  of  course  for  the  utility  ends  of  the 
adult,  but  the  various  play  ends  of  childhood.  The  worker's 
point  of  view  here  is  that  of  the  adult  so  far  as  separation  of 
means  and  end  is  concerned,  for  with  both  there  is  a  definite 
need  to  be  satisfied  irrespective  of  any  pleasure  involved  in  the 
constructive  process  as  such.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  generally 
very  close  to  the  earlier  stages  of  imitation  activity  in  that  the 
ends  themselves  are  often  of  an  imitative  sort.  That  is,  while 
the  construction  is  merely  a  means  of  obtaining  play  apparatus, 

^Which  Ribot  says  corresponds  in  the  mental  sphere  to  the  "'besoin  de 
la  generation"  in  the  physiological.     Psychologie  des  sentiments,  p.  323. 


OF  CHILDREN  .  ii 

the  play  itself  gets  its  main  meaning  and  interest  from  the  fact 
that  it  in  turn  is  an  imitation  of  some  phase  of  adult  life,  the 
imitation  element  being  simply  pushed  a  little  further  away. 
We  have  then  these  four  stages  in  the  development  of  con- 
structive motive : 

1.  The  instinctive. 

2.  The  imitational. 

3.  The  play-utility. 

4.  The  adult-utility. 

We  may  now  study  these  more  in  detail  to  determine  as 
clearly  as  possible  (i)  just  what  forms  of  activity  belong  to  each 
stage,  (2)  how  definitely  and  how  exclusively  different  purposes 
and  their  forms  of  expression  belong  to  children  of  a  certain  age, 
and  (3)  what  materials  are  best  adapted  to  the  realization  of 
these  purposes,  the  abilities  of  the  children  being  considered. 
Any  data  gained  regarding  these  points  will  be  of  direct  assist- 
ance in  determining  what  lines  of  constructive  work  best  fit  the 
different  stages  of  elementary  education. 

(i)  It  may  be  questioned  whether  the  purely  instinctive 
handling  of  materials  should  be  called  constructive  in  the  ordi- 
nary sense  of  the  word.  James  in  the  passage  quoted  suggests 
a  fundamentally  constructive  motive  for  even  the  so-called 
destructive  acts  of  early  childhood.  Groos  takes  exactly  the 
opposite  view,  looking  at  these  as  responses  to  the  fighting  in- 
stinct.^ Perhaps  it  would  be  safer  to  call  most  of  these  efforts 
mere  random  responses  to  the  general  impulse  to  activity  react- 
ing in  the  easiest  way  upon  the  most  convenient  material.  This 
we  may  call  the  manipulative  instinct  as  distinguished  from 
either  the  constructive  or  destructive.  In  the  following  pages 
we  shall  use  the  word  manipulation  for  activity  of  this  sort, 
while  the  word  construction  will  mean  work  (ordinarily  synthetic 
in  nature)  carried  on  with  reference  to  some  end  other  and 
more  remote  than  that  of  the  mere  sensations  involved  in  the 
process  itself.  Along  with  this  wholly  sensational  pleasure  of 
pure  manipulation  there  is  probably  the  beginning  of  an  in- 
tellectual pleasure,  and  from  this  side  the  activity  might  be 
called  experimentation  as  well  as  manipulation— the  child  wants 

'^Play  of  Man,  pp.   97-8. 


12  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

to  see  what  will  happen.  But  this  shows  no  such  strength  as 
the  other.  Groos  mentions  another  element,  "pleasure  in  being 
a  cause,"  which  he  thinks  appears  very  early  and  which  is  re- 
sponsible for  the  way  in  which  "moist  sand  is  heaped  up  or  dug 
away,  snow  tunnelled  through  or  rolled  into  a  great  ball,  sticks 
of  wood  piled,  water  collected  in  a  pond,  etc.  "^ 

As  to  the  period  of  this  manipulation  interest :  Groos  sug- 
gests no  dates  whatever  in  connection  with  the  list  of  activities 
just  quoted.  With  Miss  Shinn's  niece  the  "era  of  handling 
things"  began  in  the  sixth  month.'-  How  "synthetic"  or  at 
least  how  "analytic"  the  acts  of  that  period  might  be  would 
probably  depend  a  good  deal  on  the  materials  at  hand.  Perez 
says  that  they  appear  in  all  children  from  the  age  of  eight  or  ten 
months.''  Probably  only  isolated  cases  will  be  found  in  which 
the  activity  is  due  wholly  to  this  manipulation  impulse,  for  the 
imitation  factor  begins  to  count  very  early.  But  the  former 
persists  for  several  years  as  an  important  factor  in  the 
child's  relation  to  concrete  materials  and  indeed  many  adults 
are  affected  by  it  in  a  degree,  as  is  shown  by  their  tendency  to 
handle,  modify  aimlessly  and  play  with  any  new  material  which 
may  be  presented  to  them.  With  the  adult,  however,  this 
tendency  is  a  mere  survival  and  cannot  be  strong  enough  to  in- 
fluence perceptibly  his  work,  though  perhaps  it  does  his 
recreation.  At  what  age  it  loses  its  influence  on  a  child's  more 
serious  voluntary  activities  it  would  be  difficult  to  say. 

(2)  The  "mud  pie"  is  perhaps  the  most  typical  representa- 
tive of  the  transition  to  the  imitation  stage,  or  rather  of  the  infu- 
sion of  the  imitation  motive  into  the  one  preceding.  Here  is  clear- 
ly a  double  pleasure  in  manipulation  and  imitation.  Heretofore  he 
has  been   contented  to  "heap  and  dig  away"  his  sand,  but  now 

'^Play  of  Man,  p.  99. 

'^Biography  of  a  Baby^  pp.  141-161. 

3A  child  of  nine  months,  seated  on  the  floor  in  the  middle  of  a  room, 
seemed  like  a  creating  and  despotic  deity  in  the  midst  of  his  playthings, 
and  anything  else  that  was  given  to  him  or  that  he  could  get  hold  of  oy 
crawling  along, — trumpets,  drums,  balls,  paper,  books,  cakes,  fruit, — were 
piled  up  together,  ranged  side  by  side,  separated,  put  back  higglety-pigglety, 
pushed  away,  fetched  back  again,  hugged,  kissed,  gnawed,  etc.,  etc.,  and  all 
with  bursts  of  joy  which  showed  his  imperative  need  of  exercising  his 
physical  powers,  of  satisfying  an  ever  new  curiosity  and  of  imitating.  The 
First  Three  Years  of  Childhood,  pp.  276-7. 


OF  CHILDREN  13 

he  adds  to  the  pleasure  of  modifying  a  plastic  material,  that  of 
reproducing  a  household  occupation.  The  pie  is  clearly  not  an 
end  in  itself.^  It  is  demolished  as  soon  as  completed  or  at  least 
set  aside  to  make  room  for  another  and  another.-  Building  with 
blocks  is  perhaps  the  line  of  work  that  depends  most  exclusively 
upon  the  imitation  motive — manipulation  pleasure  would  seem 
sm;ill  compared  with  that  obtained  from  plastic  materials,  and 
the  product  is  still  nothing.  This  work  retains  the  interest  for 
a  long  period,  probably  because  of  its  imitativ^e  adaptiveness  — 
because  of  the  variety  of  things  and  activities  which  may  be 
reproduced  by  means  of  blocks. 

Common  observation  and  the  general  tendencies  of  kinder- 
garten practice  combine  in  pointing  to  the  kindergarten  period 
of  childhood  as  the  one  in  which  this  motive  has  the  longest  and 
most  direct  connection  with  handwork.  No  one  seems  to  have 
ventured  any  sharper  definition  of  this  stage.  The  gifts  and 
occupations,  so  large  a  part  of  the  kindergarten  program,  seem 
to  be  motived  almost  entirely  by  the  combination  of  this  manipu- 
lation and  imitation  interest.  With  the  gifts  there  is  no  perma- 
nent product,  and  while  occupation  work  does  issue  in  a  perma- 
nent product,  this  does  not  seem  to  be  a  large  center  of  interest 
— except  perhaps  near  the  end  of  the  course,  when  their 
occasional  utilization  in  play  forms  the  connection  with  the  next 
kind  of  activity.^ 

(3)  The  play-end  stage  comes  when  these  very  crude  imi- 
tations of  adult  activities  cease  to  satisfy  the  child. 
To  be  sure,  many  if  not  most  of  the  plays  of  the 
whole     preadolescent     period     are      directly      imitative      in 

^The  object  has  no  conscious  existence  at  the  time  save  in  the  activity. 
The  ball  to  the  child  is  his  game,  the  2:ame  is  his  ball. 
Dewey,  Interest  in  Relation  to  Will,  p.  16. 

■^See  Dewey,  Elementary  School  Record,  p.  49.  Also  p.  50  for  sugges 
tion  as  to  how  the  realization  of  ends  should  at  first  be  developed. 

^Compare  Dewey  :  "The  work  of  children  of  ages  six  and  seven  in- 
cludes activities  which  combine  an  immediate  appeal  to  the  child  as  an  out- 
let of  his  energy  with  leading  up  in  an  orderly  way  to  a  result  ahead.  It 
thus  forms  habits  of  working  for  ends  and  controlling  present  occupation 
so  as,  by  a  sequence  of  steps,  to  accomplish  something  beyond.  These 
habits  may  be  gradually  transferred  to  ends  more  consciously  conceived 
and  more  remote."    Elementary  School  Record. 


14  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

their  method  and  motive.^  But  the  imitation  becomes 
more  refined,  detailed  and  accurate,  and  consequently 
requires  more  highly  specialized  apparatus  than  hereto- 
fore. So  the  child  can  hardly  help  giving  more  or  less  attention 
now  to  making  what  might  be  called  the  tools  of  play-^the 
things  necessary  to  the  carrying  on  of  this  more  definite  imita- 
tion. Play  houses,  toy  boats,  furniture  and  weapons,  dolls, 
dolls'  clothing,  etc.,  are  made  and  used  in  this  form  of  play. 
It  seems  accepted  that  this  imitation  type  of  play  holds  the  in- 
terest until  into  the  eleventh  or  twelfth  year,^  and  that  it  must 
influence  constructive  preferences  seems  evident — though  how 
much  or  in  just  what  ways  we  have  no  means  of  telling.  But 
it  is  clearly  within  this  period  and  generally  in  connection  with 
these  forms  of  play  that  we  must  look  for  the  first  real  apprecia- 
tion of  construction  as  means  rather  than  end.  It  seems  safe  to 
say  that  during  this  period  work  is  occasionally  done  with  the 
adult-utility  motive,  and  that  the  proportion  of  this  work  in- 
creases with  age  up  to  adolescence  and  beyond. 

On  the  whole,  it  can  hardly  be  denied  that  our  knowledge 
regarding  these  factors  of  constructive  interest  is  exceedingly 
vague.  This  becomes  particularly  apparent  when  one  attempts 
to  give  it  any  influence  upon  school  work.  About  all  we  can 
really  hold  to  is  the  conviction  that  in  the  development  of  con- 
structive motive  the  progress  is  through  instinctive  manipula- 
tion, imitative  occupational  work,  and  the  making  of  play 
materials,  to  the  making  of  things  useful  in  the  adult  sense. 
We  hardly  know  whether  these  attitudes  are  sufficiently 
differentiated  to  justify  calling  them  stages,  or,  with  any 
definiteness,  at  what  age  any  one  of  them  reaches  its  point  of 
greatest  influence,  if  indeed  there  is  any  such  point  clearly  de- 
fined. We  know  little  of  how  far  sex  affects  motive  in  con- 
structive work.  We  have  no  data  by  means  of  which  we  can 
compare  these  stages  with  the  various  physiological  and  psycho- 

^Outside  of  school  a  large  proportion  of  children's  plays  are  simply 
more  or  less  miniature  and  hap-hazard  attempts  at  reproducing  social 
occupations. 

Dewey,  ibid,  p.  84. 

^Johnson,  Pedagogical  Seminary^  Vol.  6,  p.  519. 
Gulick,  Pedagogical  Seminary^  Vol.  6,  pp.  137-8. 


OF  CHILDREN 


15 


logical  stages  of  growth  established  from  other  points  of  view. 
The  following  material  is  offered  as  a  preliminary  contribution 
of  data  upon  such  points. 

THE  FREE  CONSTRUCTIVE   WORK  OF  CHILDREN 
IN  TWO  SCHOOLS 

A  natural  material  for  such  a  study  of  construction  motives 
and  interests  was  thought  to  be  detailed  knowledge  of  the  vari- 
ous lines  of  constructive  work  done  spontaneously  by  children 
of  both  sexes  and  the  different  ages.  As  an  attempt  to  obtain 
such  knowledge,  papers  headed  as  follows  were  given  to  200 
children  from  eight  to  sixteen  years  of  age  in  the  Horace  Mann 
and  the  Ethical  Culture  Schools,   both  in  New  York  City:  — 


LIST  OF  THINGS    MADE  OUTSIDE    OF    SCHOOL   DURING  THE 
LAST  TWELVE  MONTHS 


By. 
Grade 


Agre 


.ys.. 


^Brothers'  ages_ 


.Sisters'  ages 


Directions  :  Put  down  everything  you  can  think  of,  no  matter  how 
small  or  simple.  Ask  your  parents  if  they  will  help  you  to  make  the  list  as 
complete  as  possible. 


Made  in 
what 
month 


Name  of 
Article 


Of  what 
materials? 


How 

large? 


What      Whom 
for  ?  for? 


Remarks 


These  questions,  when  all  answered  (as  they  were  with  95 
per  cent  of  the  articles  listed),  give  what  would  seem  to  be  a 
fairly  clear  idea  of  the  main  motives  behind  the  making  of  an 
object,  its  purpose  and  its  value  to  the  child,  and  a  considerable 
basis  for  judgment  regarding  the  technical  difficulties  involved. 

One  hundred  and  seventy  sheets  were  returned  filled  out. 
Of  these  twenty-two  children  mentioned  less  than  three  articles 
made  and  their  records  were  not  computed  with  those  of  the  rest 
lest  they  should  have  undue  influence  upon  the  averages.     There 


i6  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

remained  one  hundred   and  forty-eight  sheets,  sixty-three  being 
from  boys  and  eighty-five  from  girls. ^ 

The  number  of  articles  reported  seldom  exceeded  ten,  the 
average  number  being  seven  for  the  boys,  and  eight  for  the 
girls.  Considering  the  age  of  the  children  and  the  chance  of 
accidents  to  papers,  it  is  hardly  fair  to  assume  that  the  13  per 
cent  of  unreported  cases  necessarily  represent  lack  of  work  or 
different  work  by  those  children.  And  the  13  per  cent  of 
meagre  reports  omitted  from  the  tabulation  give  no  indication  of 
being  fundamentally  different  from  those  of  the  74  per  cent 
studied.  Still,  strictly  speaking,  the  study  related  only  to  that 
74  per  cent  of  the  whole  group  which  pays  the  most  attention  to 
handwork,  or  rather,  reports  the  largest  number  of  articles.  It 
should  be  noted  also  that  most  of  the  children  in  these  two 
schools  remain  till  graduation,  and  thus  are  more  alike  in 
general  ability  than  could  be  claimed  for  children  of  the  same 
ages  in  public  schools  where  so  many  are  withdrawn  before 
reaching  the  age  of  14  years. 


CLASSIFICATION 

Five  independent  classifications  of  this  material  were 
attempted,  the  child's  age  being  made  in  each  case  the  basis  of 
the  tabulation.  Of  these  the  two  most  important  dealt  with  the 
motive  behind  the  making  of  the  article,  and  the  material  of 
which  it  was  made.  The  third  tabulation  shows  the  number  of 
times  that  such  distinctively  art  work  as  drawing,  painting, 
etc. ,  were  recorded,  and  the  fourth  shows  the  presence  of  an 
element  which  we  will  call  "vitality" — the  "go"  which  belongs 
to  a  toy  water  wheel  or  windmill,  and  is  lacking  in  a  tool  chest 
or  picture  frame.     Both  of  these  really  belong  under  the  general 

iWhile  a  larger  quantity  of  them  would  have  been  exceedingly  desirable 
and  easily  obtained,  it  seemed  important  that  the  tabulating  should  not  be 
delegated  and  that  it  should  have  the  uniformity  of  one  person's  view-point. 
It  is  believed  that  a  somewhat  careful  and  detailed  treatment  of  the  data 
presented  has  more  value  as  a  preliminary  study  than  the  kind  of  work 
which  would  have  been  necessary  with  a  larger  amount  of  material. 


OF  CHILDREN  17 

head  of  motive  but  are  tabulated  independently  of  what  appears 
to  be  the  ruling  motive  of  a  project.  The  fifth  tabulation  was 
an  effort  to  determine  ihe  part  played  by  the  school  in  suggest- 
ing the  handwork  done  outside,  but  the  information  here  proved 
too  me.igre  to  be  worth  recording. 

It  was  difficult  to  determine  what  classification  of  the 
motives  for  making  these  different  articles  would  be  the  most 
inclusive  and  fruitful.  The  utility  class  and  the  play  class  are 
the  two  which  we  are  perhaps  most  interested  in  comparing.  But 
while  these  are  very  geneml  they  do  not  seem  to  cover  the  whole 
field.  Things  made  as  gifts  are  often  useful  and  often  play- 
thiui^s,  but  the  utility  or  play  motive  here  involved  is  quite  a 
different  thing  from  that  c^ntermg  in  the  making  of  things  for 
the  child's  own  use.  So  the  most  logical  basal  division  would 
secf-n  to  be  into  the  two  classes,  made-for-self  and  made-for. 
others,  each  of  which  may  be  subdivitled  into  play  and  utility 
classes.  This,  however,  is  an  incomplete  analysis  of  the  made- 
for-')thers  section,  for  in  addition  to  useful  gifts  and  play  gifts 
there  are  also  those  which  are  mere  remembrances,  and  have  no 
funher  purpose.  H  )wever,  our  miin  purpose  is  a  quantitative 
study  of  the  various  forms  of  the  play  and  utility  motives  already 
mentioned  and  of  their  reLitive  importance  in  the  different  years 
or  periods  of  childhood.  So  the  smaller  made-for-others  classes 
were  kept  separate,  not  so  much  for  their  own  significance  as  in 
order  not  to  prejudice  results  in  these  main  groups.  The  most 
practical  though  not  the  most  logical  primary  division  is  into 
classes  representing   the  play,  the   utility  and  the  gift  motives. 

The  subdivisions  of  play  motive  are  in  general  those  already 
discussed,  the  two  main  ones  being  play-imitation  in  which  the 
construction  itself  constitutes  the  game,  and  play-utility  in 
which  the  purpose  is  to  obtain  tools  of  play.  Several  lines  of 
work  which  were  quite  prominent  and  continuous  were  listed 
independently  of  these  two  classes.  These  were  (i)  the  making 
of  boats,  (2)  construction  connected  with  animals  (houses,  traps, 
etc.),  (3)  the  making  and  dressing  of  dolls,  and  (4)  cookery. 
These  are  all  particularly  hard  to  separate  into  the  two  classes 
first  mentioned.  It  seems  to  the  writer,  however,  that  in  the 
making  of  boats,  dolls  and  animal  traps,  the  play-utility  motive 
is  the  most   general   and   prominent   and   that   making  animal 


i8  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

houses  belongs  here  also,  though  less  completely,  as  the  simple 
utility  motive  seems  to  enter  rather  more.  Cookery  is  hardest 
of  all  to  classify.  It  probably  depends  more  largely  upon  the 
instinctive  manipulation  pleasure  than  any  other  line  of  pro- 
ductive work  included  in  this  study.  At  least,  it  will  seldom 
be  practiced  voluntarily  except  by  the  children  who  do  gain 
some  of  this  kind  of  pleasure  from  it.  But  this  motive  will  be 
greatly  reinforced  by  that  of  play  imitation  in  the  case  of  younger 
girls  and  doubtless  by  the  utility— or  gustatory — motive  with 
the  older  ones.  Things  made  with  the  adult-utility  motive 
were  placed  in  two  classes:  that  of  "utility,"  containing  the 
things  made  for  the  worker's  own  use,  while  such  things  made 
for  others  fall  into  the  useful-gift  class.  The  gift  class  as  a 
whole  was  divided  into  the  three  of  useful  gifts,  play  gifts  and 
gifts,  the  last  including  such  gifts  as  are  mere  remembrances 
and  without  other  value.  It  is  evident  that  these  classes  must 
shade  into  each  other  with  great  delicacy  at  times,  and  that  the 
attempt  to  take  things  which  must  represent  such  an  interplay 
of  motive,  and  place  them  in  classes  so  simple  and  sharply  de- 
fined is  bound  to  raise  some  question  as  to  the  real  value  of  such 
a  study.  It  must  be  admitted  that  it  was  sometimes  difficult  to 
select  one  of  two  or  even  three  classes  for  a  given  article.  This, 
however,  was  far  more  often  due  to  the  fact  that  the  article 
clearly  represented  a  transition  stage  than  for  mere  lack  of  in- 
formation about  it.  For  example,  does  the  building  of  a  camp, 
hut  to  sleep  in  or  the  making  of  a  real  row-boat  belong  in  the 
play-Utility  or  in  the  adult-utility  class.''  They  were  finally 
placed  in  the  former,  but  so  far  as  the  separation  of  means  and 
end  is  concerned  the  adult  view-point  seems  fully  reached,  and 
the  utility  class  would  seem  to  have  an  almost  equal  claim  upon 
them.  Then  there  were  sometimes  difficulties  in  classifying 
certain  things  which  proved  to  be  made  by  children  of  all  ages 
and  would  thus  seem  to  have  some  place  in  all  three  of  these 
classes.  Thus  the  making  of  a  dam  might  mean  anything  from 
the  mere  play  with  water  to  furnishing  the  power  for  a  large 
factory.  But  if  we  have  in  addition  the  statement  that  the  dam 
was  made  in  order  to  sail  toy  boats,  then  this  particular  dam 
stands  out  plainly  as  a  member  of  play-utility  class.  With  these 
articles  some  such  cue  to  the  motive  was   generally   at  hand   so 


OF  CHILDREN  19 

that  they  were  a  less  serious  problem  than  the  first  one  men- 
tioned, while  the  great  majority  of  articles  belonged  quite 
clearly  to  one  or  another  of  the  groups. 

The  method  of  tabulating  was  as  follows :  Each  article  in 
a  child's  list  was  scored  in  that  motive  column  which  seemed 
most  appropriate,  then  the  child's  record  as  a  whole  was  formed 
by  reducing  the  number  of  articles  recorded  in  any  one  column 
to  its  percentage  of  the  total  number  of  articles  recorded  by  that 
child.  Thus  two  useful  gifts  in  a  sheet  mentioning  eight  arti. 
cles,  would  give  a  weight  of  25  per  cent  to  that  motive.  The 
following  is  a  sample  record  of  a  boy :  No.  207.  H.  R.  Grade 
V.     Age,  10  yrs.,  2  mo.     No.  of  articles,  9. 


For  animals 

2  articles 

22  per  cent 

Play  utility 

3 

33 

Play  imitation 

I 

II 

Useful  gifts 

3 

33 

Vitality  4         *'  44        " 

As  no  sheet  containing  less  than  three  articles  was  included 
in  the  final  tabulation,  no  one  article  could  make  a  showing 
higher  than  33  per  cent  in  the  individual  child's  record,  while 
its  average  weight  there  would  be  from  12  to  14  per  cent.  Then 
a  variety  of  age  groups  were  formed  and  the  aggregate  of  percen. 
tages  was  divided  by  the  number  of  children  in  the  group,  thus 
giving  an  average  per  cent  indicative  of  the  rank  of  that  motive 
within  the  group  concerned. 

Partly  as  a  check  upon  accidental  results  due  to  the  small 
number  of  cases,  six  independent  groupings  were  formed  and 
averaged,  three  for  each  school.  The  first  was  into  three 
groups, including  ages  8-9  years,  lo-ii  years,  12.14  years  respec- 
tively ;  the  second  grouping  was  by  periods  of  one  year ;  and  the 
third  by  periods  of  six  months.  We  may  call  these  the  groups 
by  periods,  the  groups  by  years,  and  the  groups  by  half-years. 
On  the  following  page  will  be  found  the  period  averages  of  boys 
for  each  school  and  for  the  two  schools  combined ;  the  year  aver- 
ages of  both  schools  combined ;  then  the  total  averages  for  each 
school  and  both   schools.      The  half-year  and  year  groupings   of 


20  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

the  two  schools  separately  contained  too  few  cases  to  give  any 
curves.  The  half-year  groups  of  the  schools  combined  devel- 
oped a  few  points  of  interest  which  will  be  mentioned  later. 

The  only  material  similar  to  this  known  to  the  writer  is  in 
Crosswell's  study  of  games  already  referred  to\  In  a 
questionaire  given  to  10,000  Worcester  school  children  he 
asks  them  to  describe  anything  which  they  themselves  have 
made.  Wherever  possible,  I  have  tabulated  his  lists  of  articles 
according  to  the  present  plan.  The  results  here,  representing 
as  they  do  a  much  larger  number  of  children,  furnish  some  in. 
teresting  comparisons  with  our  own  general  averages  and  with 
the  relative  frequency  of  the  different  projects  shown  in  the 
article  lists.  These  figures  will  be  indicated  as  we  proceed. 
The  ages  of  his  children  not  being  stated,  this  material  cannot, 
of  course,  help  us  on  the  genetic  problems   within   this  period. 

edagogical  Seminary^  Vol.  6,  315. 


STATISTICS  OF  THE  BOYS'  HAND-WORK 


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THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 


LIST    OF    THE    ARTICLES     MENTIONED     BY     BOYS.        BOTH 

SCHOOLS 

Play-imitation,  59  articles :  Spears,  swords,  etc.  10,  theatres  8,  houses 
5,  docks  3,  chairs  3,  claywork  3,  beds  2,  cranes  2,  windmills  2,  elevators  2, 
derricks  2.  Wild  West  show,  cave,  card-board  monkey,  acorn  pipe,  Indian 
head-dress,  cannon,  camera,  spoon,  railway  track,  Indian  village,  saw-mill, 
brush,  mud-pie,  paper  pasting,  telephone,  mask,  bridge,  i  each. 

Play-utility,  188  articles:  Boats  64,  for  animals  28  (13  traps  and  15 
houses),  wagons  12,  balls  11,  bows  and  arrows  9,  houses  9,  kites  5,  bean 
shooters  5,  guns  3,  tents  2,  bean  bags  2,  whistles  2,  stilts  2,  sleds  2,  water- 
wheels  2,  derricks  2,  elevators  2,  dams  2,  toboggans  2.  Swing,  bridge, 
show-house,  ring-toss,  tennis-poles,  gunpowder,  cave,  bathing-chute,  paddle, 
lead-cannon,  high-jumping  poles,  basket-ball  goal,  torpedo,  reins,  whip, 
scrap-book,  "wether  vain,"  fishing  tackle,  fish-nets,  mask,  jumping-jack, 
camp-bed,  i  each. 

Utility,  45  articles :  Picture  frames  6,  boxes  3,  tool  chests  2,  pen 
wipers  2,  book  covers  2.  Hen-coop,  basket,  braid,  shooting-blind,  loom, 
clothes-rack,  wand,  flower-box,  paper-cutter,  candle-holder,  easel,  pen- 
holder, pen-rack,  book-case,  ruby  lamp,  sail-boom,  tray,  calendar,  book, 
"sew  clothes,"  caning  chair,  tooth-brush  holder,  stamp  book,  card  printing, 
type  making,  camp  sign,  ladder,  stone  bridge,  pin  cushion,  camp  hut,  i  each. 

Gift-utility,  72  articles:  Baskets  14,  boxes  5,  picture  frames  4,  calen- 
dars 4,  mats  4,  match  boxes  3,  book  covers  3,  brackets  2,  paper  knives  2, 
pen  wipers  2,  pen  holders  2.  Scrap  book,  thermometer  back,  book,  bib, 
lamp  shade,  book  mark,  match  scratcher,  table,  sleeve  board,  letter  rack, 
"monogram  frames,"  blotter,  breast  pin,  sponge  bag,  foot  stool,  soap  box, 
"burnt  work,"  "paper  weight,"  hat,  fei-nery,  chicken  nest,  doiley,  corn-pop- 
per stand,  sofa  pillow,  hammock,  Christmas  tree  stand,  whist  counter,  i  each. 

Play-gifts^  14  articles:  Doll's  chairs  2,  doll's  hammocks  3,  boats  2, 
Rolling  pin,  dart,  doll's  house,  reins,  knotted  cord,  doll's  bedding,  hunting 
knife,  i  each. 

Mere  gifts,  12  articles:     Easter  cards  5,  valentines  4,  paintings  3. 

Painting  and  Drawing.     Mentioned  by  12  boys. 


Looking  first  at  the  three  columns  of  Table  I  which  repre- 
sent the  total  averages,  it  will  be  seen  that  with  one  or  two 
exceptions  the  records  of  the  two  schools  are  very  close  together. 
With  five  of  the  fifteen  motive  elements  recorded  they  are  only 
I  per  cent  apart,  and  with  five  others  only  4  per  cent  apart.  So 
the  averages  of  the  two  schools  seem  to  offer  a  fairly  good  basis 
for  a  quantitative  ranking  of  these  various  interests  during  this 


OF   CHILDREN  23 

six  or  seven-year  period  of  childhood  taken  as  a  whole,  Assum. 
ing  that  we  are  justified  in  looking  at  this  period  as  a  unit,  we 
may  conclude  that  nearly  half  of  a  boy's  voluntary  construction 
projects  will  be  things  to  be  used  in  his  play  and  that  some 
three-tenths  will  be  articles  of  real  use  (two-tenths  for  use  by 
others  against  one-tenth  for  his  own  use).  Of  the  work  devoted 
to  play  it  appears  that  one-fourth  to  one-third  of  the  articles 
within  this  group  will  be  boats,  while  a  rather  even  one-tenth 
of  them  will  relate  to  animal  life.  It  is  further  shown  that 
roughly  a  third  of  the  whole,  and  a  much  larger  part  of  the  play 
division,  have  the  element  which  we  have  named  vitality. 

Croswell's  study^  furnishes  material  for  an  interesting  com- 
parison at  this  point.  It  includes  lists  of  10,000  articles  re- 
ported to  be  made  within  a  group  of  4000  boys.  How  many  of 
them  mentioned  things  made  is  not  stated.  These  articles,  clas- 
sifiedin  the  rough  way  possible  with  no  data  except  their  names, 
give  to — 

Utility  I  per  cent. 

Dolls  I  per  cent. 

Play-imitation  2  per  cent. 

Play-utility  96  per  cent. 

and  furnishes  a  rather  startling  evidence  of  the  conservativeness 
of  our  own  play  record.  The  contrast  is  an  indirect  suggestion 
of  the  relative  intensity  of  these  different  motives,  for  Cross- 
well's  request  to  "describe  anything  you  have  made"  was  only 
one  among  a  number  relating  to  different  subjects  and  would 
likely  elicit  only  the  most  important  and  best  remembered  pro- 
jects, while  our  own  request  to  "mention  everything  you  can 
recall  no  matter  how  small  or  simple,"  might  better  from  this 
point  of  view  have  been  omitted  as  it  has  doubtless  resulted  in 
the  recording  of  more  or  less  that  has  very  little  comparative 
interest.  A  comparison'of  the  two  tables  suggests  very  strongly 
that  if  the  relative  intensity  of  these  different  construction 
motives  were  measurable  the  result  would  give  a  far  larger  place 
to  the  play-utility  type  of  work  than  is  indicated  by  considera- 
tion of  the  mere  number  (44  per  cent)  of  articles.  -  How  far  the 
96  per  cent  of  the  Worcester  boys  might  vary  with  age  we  have 
no  means  of  knowing. 

"^Pedagogical  Seminary^  Vol.  6,  p.  315 


24  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

There  remains,  however,  the  question,  —is  there  sufficient 
unity  to  these  six  years  of  boyhood  to  give  value  to  such  analysis 
of  it  as  a  single  period,  or  are  the  intercuts  of  its  different  p  irts 
so  diverse  that  this  lump  average  of  the  whole  has  no  meaning 
for  any  particular  part  and  cannot  in  the  least  degree  sei"ve  as  a 
guide  to  school  practice?  This  must  be  determined  by  compari- 
son of  the  sub-groups  formed  on  a  basis  of  age.  If  diversity 
appears  we  shall  need  to  subdivide  the  period  into  divisions  con- 
taining the  greatest  possible  degree  of  homogeneity,  defining 
them  and  meisuring  their  differences  so  fir  as  pissibl-.  We 
shall  quote  from  the  figures  for  the  combined  schools,  wi;h 
which  it  will  be  seen  that  the  separate  records  of  the  two 
schools  largely  agree,  calling  attention  to  the  discrepancies  as 
they  occur.  The  division  by  ye  irs  allows  only  ten  cases  to  a 
group,  so  that  perfectly  smooth  curves  here  could  not  b.^  ex- 
pected, but  it  is  valuable  in  showing  the  limits  of  \'ariability 
within  the  larger  groups,  where  the  results  are  much  more  uni- 
form. 

It  will  be  seen  that,  while  a  number  of  interests  remain  at 
about  the  same  level  for  the  whole  time  covered  and  one  or  two 
fluctuate  irregularly,  the  four  in  the  following  table  show  a  dis- 
tinct rise  or  decline: 


Changing  Interests 
Age  8-9     lo-ii     12.14    9     10     II     12     13     14 


Play  imitation 

27 

20 

5 

29 

19 

20 

10 

4 

3 

Play  utility 

29 

48 

51 

3^ 

5J[ 

SO 

45 

39 

69 

Utility 

5 

6 

20 

5 

7 

5 

21 

25 

6 

Useful  gilts 

34 

20 

14 

21 

26 

14 

II 

15 

15 

While  the  directions  of  these  changes  are  what  one  would 
expect,  the  figures  give  some  meisure  of  their  extent.  Pliv- 
imitation  decreases  quite  evenly  from  year  to  yeir.  If  similar 
figures  were  available  bearifig  up  m  this  element  in  th  '  sixth  to 
eighth  years,  it  would  doubtl  'ss  prove  very  strong  there.  Tiiat 
the  reports  of  the  eight-year-olds  sh'»w  an  amount  less  than  th  it 
at  9  years  should  not  be  thought  to  weaken  the   argument   seri- 


OF    CHILDREN  25 

OLisly,  both  because  there  are  only  three  of  them  and  because 
beifig  in  aclv.uice  of  their  age  at  school  they  would  likely  be  pre- 
cocious in  respjct  to  these  interests  also.  Although  a  waning 
interest,  it  seems  to  b"  a  not  unimportant  element  in  the  work  of 
the  period  from  Q-12  years.  The  twelfth  is  evidently  the  transi- 
tion year  s'lowing  10  per  cent  here  between  20  per  cent  in  the 
eleventh  and  4  per  cent  in  the  thirteenth.  There  is  an  almost 
identical  difference  between  the  lo-ii  year  period  and  that  of  12- 
14  years,  one  which  is  fully  supported  by  the  separate  tabula- 
tions of  the  two  schools. 

The  play.uiility  interest  increases,  though  not  with  the 
regul  irity  of  the  curve  just  noted,  though  it  is  doubtless  mainly 
responsible  for  the  decline  of  the  play.imifation  interest.  Its 
maximum  of  69  per  cent  at  fourteen  years  should  be  qualified  by 
the  fact  th  it  there  were  only  seven  boys  of  that  age.  The 
geiierd  tendency,  however,  is  evident  and  its  decline,  like  its 
beginning,  would  seem  to  occur  outside  the  age  limits  of  this 
study. 

Th  e  other  two  most  changing  interests  are  those  of  utility. 
Tait  tie  utility  (for  self)  cl  IS-;  wix:s,  whilithatof  the  useful 
gifts  wauL'S,  would  suggest  a  reaction  between  them.  However, 
the  figures  in  detail  do  not  correspond  closely  enough  to  demand 
that  position,  and  there  is  nothing  in  common  experience  to  sug- 
gest t!iat  children  in  any  direct  way  transfer  their  interests  from 
making  useful  things  for  others  to  the  making  of  useful  things 
for  the  n^elves.  The  way  in  which  the  extreme  figures  of  the 
play.iirdtation  and  uiility  columns  counterbalance  each  other 
would  give  m nre  reason  for  claiming  a  direct  transfer  of  interests 
here,  and  this  wouM  suppoi  t  the  idea  of  a  sequence  of  develop- 
ment through  play-imitation,  play-utility  and  utility. 

The  reasons  for  the  diminuti'  m  in  useful  gifts  are  not  so  easily 
determined,  coming  in  the  twelfih  to  fourteenth  years  during 
which  timi  the  social  instincts  are  thought  to  be  coming  to  the 
fore.  In  fact  the  large  percentage  of  these  useful  gifts  during 
the  eirlier  years  i-;  itSvdf  rather  surprising.  The  results  wiih 
the  girls  se^m  to  throw  a  little  liglit  on  this  point.  It  will  be 
seen  latT  th  it  their  proportion  of  useful  gifts  is  much  higher 
thr  »ughout,  with  a  general  average  of  40  per  cent  against  that 
of  20  per  cent  for  the  boys.   Girls  seem  in   general   to   be   more 


26  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

amenable  to  suggestion  than  boys,  and  the  boy's  attitude  seems 
much  more  like  that  of  the  girl  before  the  age  of  eleven  or 
twelve  than  it  does  afterwards.  It  will  be  seen  by  reference  to 
the  lists  of  articles  that  the  useful  gifts  tend  to  be  of  a  conven- 
tional sort— calendars,  picture  frames,  match-boxes,  and  such 
things  as  a  child  would  hardly  think  of  making  except  through 
direct  suggestion  and  imitation.  These  are  the  things  most 
likely  to  be  suggested  by  the  elders  to  a  child  as  a  means  of 
satisfying  his  craving  for  doing  something  he  knows  not  what, 
or  as  a  means  of  keeping  him  busy.  So  it  might  be  held  that 
the  utility  element  as  such  is  not  a  large  one  in  the  motive  for 
the  making  of  these  more  or  less  useful  gifts  during  the  ages  8- 
II,  and  that  the  motive  is  rather  the  general  instinct  toward 
constructiveness  manifested  along  suggested  lines.  However, 
it  is  a  matter  of  common  observation  that  the  desire  to  give  pre- 
sents reinforces  this  motive  strongly  in  many  cases,  even  with 
very  small  children.  To  the  relative  importance  of  these 
motives  such  figures  furnish  no  clue. 


The  Vitality  Classification 

This  is  independent  of  the  others  and  gives  a  fairly  definite 
quantitative  statement  of  a  constructive  tendency,  the  existence 
of  which  would  be  sufficiently  attested  by  common  observation — 
the  tendency  to  make  things  that  will  "work,''  "go,"  "do 
something."    . 

Ages  8-9     lo-ii     12-14    9     10     II     12     13     14     8-14 

Vitality  22        ^  41     25     35     40    35     32     58      33 

It  is  thus  seen  to  belong  to  from  one-quarter  to  one-third  of 
the  articles  made.  It  might  be  questioned  whether  the  increase 
is  due  to  development  of  the  taste  itself  or  merely  to  increase  of 
power  for  satisfying  it,  but  the  latter  seems  to  the  writer  the 
more  probable  explanation.  Its  distribution,  too,  is  striking. 
Only  eight  boys,  four  in  each  school,  fail  to  record  at   least  one 


OF  CHILDREN  27 

article  falling  within  this  class,  thus  making  it  the  most  widely 
diffused  element  of  motive — that  of  play  in  general  excepted — 
which  our  analysis  of  these  returns  discovers;  for  to  the  useful- 
gift  class,  which  stands  next,  there  are  twenty-five  boys  who 
contribute  nothing,  and  thirty-seven  record  nothing  in  the 
utility  column. 


The  Gift  Motives 
Ages  8-9     10- 1 1     12-14    9     10     II     12     13     14     8-14 


Useful  gifts 

34 

20 

14 

21 

26 

14 

II 

15 

15 

20 

Play  gifts 

2 

2 

6 

I 

3 

4 

10 

3 

Mere  gifts 

3 

4 

2 

3 

3 

7 

2 

2 

3 

Total  gifts 

39 

30 

22 

35 

30 

24 

14 

27 

17 

26 

The  sub-divisions  here  have  only  a  negative  value.  The 
gift  element  in  the  motive  is  doubtless  altogether  dominant  in 
all  three,  so  that  the  question  into  which  sub-group  the  article 
falls  is  a  very  incidental  matter.  The  play  gift  may  be  looked 
upon  as  a  useful  gift  in  the  fullest  sense  so  far  as  the  maker's 
motive  is  concerned.  The  doll's  bed  made  for  the  small  sister 
may  in  a  much  more  real  sense  be  called  a  useful  gift  than  the 
match.scratcher  made  for  an  uncle.  We  may,  however,  give 
the  name  of  "serviceableness"  to  the  common  element  in  these 
play  and  adult  forms  of  utility,  and  this  is  almost  invariably 
present  in  the  children's  gifts  here  recorded.  The  mere- 
remembrance  gifts,  consisting  largely  of  drawings,  Easter  cards, 
etc.,  are  seen  to  be  generally  less  than  one-tenth  as  numerous 
as  those  having  more  or  less  of  this  serviceableness,  so  it  would 
seem  that  the  child  likes  to  do  something  definite  for  the  person 
concerned  as  well  as  merely  to  give  expression  to  the  feeling  of 
friendship. 

The  division  into  play  and  useful  gifts  may  be  made  to 
serve  another  purpose.  The  so-classified  "useful"  gifts  are  al- 
most invariably  for  adults  while  the  play  gifts  of  course  go  to 
children.  However  explained  it  is  an  interesting  and  rather 
surprising  fact  that  even  including  the  mere  gift  with  those   of 


28  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

play,  many  of  the  former  being  also  intended  for  children,  they 
are  seldom  more  than  one-half  as  numerous  as  those  made  for 
adults,  and  sometimes  one-eighth  of  the  latter.  The  figures  are 
as  follows: 


Ages  8-9  lo-ii   12-14  9  10  n   12  13  14  8-14 

Gifts  made  for  adults   39      20         14  21  26  14  11   i5  15     20 
Gift  made  for  children    5       6  834104122      6 


This  very  striking  preponderance  of  making  for  adults  may  be 
looked  at  in  various  ways.  It  may  be  that  the  question  hi\s  no 
relation  at  all  to  that  <f  motive  in  construction,  and  that  if  all 
presents  given  by  children  were  classified  in  this  way  they 
would  show  the  same  preference  f'  r  adults.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  are  two  influences  which  might  benr  on  the  handwork  con- 
cerned. The  child  p  rhaps  g'ins  a  fci  lingof  dignity  in  making 
something  which  he  imagines  will  be  of  actual  use  to  a  grown 
person,  which  might  not  ac*  rue  from  the  making  of  something 
for  a  playmate.  Further  the  adnlt  is  likely  to  make  much  of 
the  fact  that  the  child  mai'e  it  himself —  a  fact  which  would 
mean  much  less  to  a  jilaymate. 

It  is  apparent  that  the  excess  of  gifts  to  adults  is  in  the 
years  8-10  and  that  it  becomes  much  rt  duced  later.  This  is 
due  to  decrease  of  gifts  to  adults  much  more  than  to  increase  of 
those  for  chiklren,  yet  th.  r  •  is  a  clearly  marked  increase  of  the 
latter.  The  things  which  th  ;  older  beys  make  for  chlidren  are 
apparently  for  children  much  younger  than  themselves. 

Rf^garding  gift  construction  as  a  whole,  then,  we  seem  to 
have  first  the  very  pidnounced  tendency  of  the  small  boy  to  make 
things  for  adults,  and  with  the  adolescent  boy  a  smaller  gift 
total  divided  much  more  equally  between  adult  and  small 
children,  but  nowhere  any  marked  tendency  to  make  presents 
for  his  friends  of  his  own  age.  How  far  this  tendency  deserves 
encouraging  or  discouraging  on  ethical  giounds  is  a  question 
which  might  be  worthy  of  consideration,  and  it  would  be  of  in- 
terest to  know  whether  this  means  a  comparative   non-exchange 


OF   CHILDREN  29 

of  gifts  between  mates  or  simply  that  "stt^re  presents"  are  here 
substituted  for  the  woik  of  one's  own  hands. 


The  More  Stable  Interests 


The  following  groups  appear  to  be  much  more  s'able  in  their 
appeal,  and  while  fluctuating  somewhat  betray  no  genetic  reason 
fur  so  doing. 


Ages  89     lo-ii     12-14     9     10     II     12     13     14     8-14 

Total  Play         56        68  55       56  66     70     55     43     76      59 

Total  Utility    39        30  34       17  32     19     3i     40     21      31 

The  total  formed  from  the  tv\o  utility  classes  is  seen  to  keep 
fairly  close  to  its  general  average  of  31  percent.  This,  how- 
ever, dors  not  seem  to  the  writer  to  be  significant  of  any  special 
stability  in  the  utility  interest  as  such,  for  the  reason  already 
suggested  that  in  the  class  named  useful  gifts  the  utility  element 
in  the  motive  is  distinctly  incidental  to  the  gift  motive.  So 
this  total  utility  class  is  in  reality  a  combination  of  two  very 
different  interests  which  vary  in  opposite  directions. 

With  regard  to  the  play  total,  the  same  thing  is  true  but  in 
considerably  less  degree.  In  all  of  thrse  the  play  element  of 
motive  is  in  one  form  or  another  the  leading  one,  (play  gifts  are 
not  here  included)  and  the  general  average  of  59  per  cent  seems 
a  f  lir  estimate  of  the  influence  of  play  upon  construction  be- 
twc  en  the  ages  of  eight  and  fifteen.  The  fluctuation  is  consider- 
able but  too  irregular  to  suggest  any  inferences,  the  minimum 
and  maximum  ap])earing  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourieenth  years 
respectively.  It  is  to  be  said  regarding  ihe  76  per  cent  of  the 
fourteenth  year,  that  it  includes  various  pieces  of  camp  and 
athletic  apparatus  which  might  with  almost  equal  propriety  be 
placed  in  the  utility  column  (which  is  pr'ipi  rtionately  weak  at 
this  point),  thus  giving  a  much  smoother  curve  for  both  these 
interests. 


30  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

The  two  special  classes  of  boats  and  things-made.for- 
animals  also  make  a  comparatively  even  record  throughout  the 
six  years. 


Ages  8-9     lo-ii     12-14    9     10     II     12     13     14     8-14 


For  Animals 

6 

5 

9 

7 

5       5 

14 

6 

4 

7 

Boats 

9 

18 

15 

II 

17    20 

7 

15 

22 

15 

This,  coupled  with  the  evidently  large  amount  of  the  imitation 
element  in  boat-play,  suggests  that  boats  might  be  given 
partially  to  the  play-imitation  motive.  While  a  very  few  might 
fit  better  there,  the  great  majority  seemed  to  belong  most 
naturally  to  the  play-utility  class,  while  the  "for-animals"  class 
seems  to  belong  there  unquestionably — though  with  a  leaning 
occasionally  towards  that  of  utility  in  the  case  of  a  very  few 
articles  like  chicken  coops,  etc.  As  the  list  of  articles  (p.  22) 
shows,  these  are  clearly  the  two  great  constructional  projects  of 
boyhood.  Twenty-eight  pieces  reported  are  for  animals  and 
sixty-four  are  boats,  making  them  respectively  twice  and  five 
times  as  numerous  as  the  baskets,  which  rank  third.  Of  the 
boats  twelve  were  rafts  built  for  use  in  paddling  about,  diving, 
etc.  Of  these  twelve,  ten  were  made  by  boys  of  the  Horace 
Mann  School.  Probably  a  larger  proportion  of  these  boys  spend 
their  summers  in  the  country.  The  boats  appear  quite  evenly 
after  the  age  of  ten  years,  the  numbers  for  each  year  beginning 
with  the  ninth  being  i,  o,  3,  2,  2,  4.  The  toy  boat  holds  its  own 
in  the  later  years  as  well  as  the  earlier  ones,  and  is  here  generally 
a  model  racing  yacht  or  a  rather  elaborate  model  of  a  battle  ship. 
The  fact  that  in  each  of  these  six  years  from  ten  to  twenty 
per  cent  of  the  boys'  free  construction  goes  to  boat-making 
seems  a  strong  demand  for  much  more  attention  to  the  boats  as- 
an  object  of  school  handwork.  On  the  side  of  interest  at  least, 
its  claim  is  seen  to  be  sufficiently  pre-eminent.  And  when  we 
think  of  the  possibilites  either  of  simplicity  or  of  complexity, 
the  exceedingly  varied  constructional  problems  that  boat-making 


OF   CHILDREN  31 

may  develop,  the  variety  of  materials  which  it  may  require  one 
to  work  in  and  the  problems  in  physics  which  must  be  solved 
experimentally  in  order  to  insure  success,  it  would  seem  very 
advantageous  to  have  a  rather  definite  series  of  boat-contructions 
in  the  handwork  curriculum  which  would  develop  the  problems 
in  a  progressive  way,  and  one  of  which  would  appear  in  every 
year  or  second  year  of  the  elementary  course. 

Of  the  twenty-eight  things  relating  to  animal  life,  thirteen 
are  some  form  of  trap  and  fourteen  are  houses,  cages,  etc. 
However  much  or  little  these  may  be  thought  to  differ  in 
motive,  they  are  just  as  nearly  balanced  for  each  year  as  they 
are  in  the  total. 


Ages  9       10       II       12       13       14  9 

Animal-Houses  321423  14 

Animal-Traps  24232  13 


These  are  the  work  of  sixteen  boys,  four  having  made  traps 
alone,  eight  houses  alone,  and  four  both. 


The  percentages  for  art  work  as  such  are  as  follows : 
Ages  8-9     lo-ii     12-14      9     10     II     12     13     14     8-14 

Art  Work        3  4  4  3423454 

No.  of  children 

reporting  221222 


These  figures  have  not  the  same  significance  as  those  already 
discussed  as  they  generally  rest  only  upon  some  such  statement 
as  "some  paintings,''  "several  drawings,"  etc.,  and  so  give 
little  idea  of  the  comparative  importance  of  this  work  in  the 
child's  mind.  The  fact  that  fourteen  out  of  the  sixty-three  boys 
mentioned  drawing  or  painting  is  more  significant  than  the 
general  average  of  4  percent  which  is  an  attempt  at  representing 


32  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

the  proportion  of  interest  in  this  as  compared  with  coRstructive 
work.  But  in  every  case  the  per  cent  is  based  on  a  single  sheet 
and  necessarily  recorded  as  such.  But  the  evenness  of  the  per 
cents  for  the  different  years  and  periods  is  equaled  by  that  of 
the  number  of  children  of  such  age  reporting  art  work.  It 
seems  safe  to  say  not  only  that  an  average  of  two  children  in  ten 
do  some  such  work  of  their  own  accord,  but  that  two  children 
out  of  every  ten  do  so,  and  no  more.  The  attention  given  to 
art  work  in  the  school  room  is  too  nearly  the  same  in  the  two 
schools  to  allow  of  any  judgment  regarding  its  influence  upon 
this  form  of  home  work.      It  is  considerable  in  both  of  them. 


The  List  of  Articles  by  Classes 


These  lists  which  follow  Table  I  on  p.  22  present  points 
of  interest,  some  of  which  have  been  already  touched  upon. 
Some  articles  such  as  windmill,  house,  etc.,  appear  in  the  list 
of  more  than  one  class,  the  detailed  description  seeming  to  re- 
quire this. 

The  play-utility  class  is  seen  to  have  the  least  variety  of  ar- 
ticles, its  size  being  considered,  while  the  utility  class  is  the 
most  diffuse  in  this  respect.  Even  omitting  the  64  boats  and 
the  28  animal  contrivances  which  so  far  exceed  everything  else, 
there  are  still  the  12  wagons,  11  balls,  9  bows  and  arrows,  and  9 
houses,  while  in  the  utility  class  there  are  only  four  articles 
mentioned  more  than  once  (6  picture  frames,  3  boxes,  2  tool 
chests,  2  pen  wipers,)  with  33  things  mentioned  only  once,  as 
against  22  pieces  mentioned  once  in  the  play-utility  class,  whose 
total  is  four  time=i  as  large.  A  rather  common  argument  for 
making  only  useful  articles  in  the  school  room  is  based  on  the 
thought  that  it  is  only  such  work  that  can  be  expected  to  appeal 
to  every  child  in  a  large  class.  If  the  play  interests  are  as 
general  and  the  utility  interests  as  highly  special  and  individual 
as  these  figures  suggest ;  if  the  tendency  among  boys  to  2ise  the 
same  things  is  so  much  weaker  than  that  to  play  the  same  things, 
an  exactly  contrary  practice  should  prevail  in  so  far  as  the  cur- 
rent one  is  based  on  this  idea. 


OF  CHILDREN  33 

It  must  be  added  at  once  that  the  useful-gift  class  is  almost 
as  diverse  as  that  of  utility.  The  variety  here  is  somewhat 
against  the  suggestion  already  offered  that  the  things  made  for 
this  purpose  are  largely  suggested  by  adults;  still  the  list  of 
articles  does  not  read  like  one  evolved  wholly  from  a  boy's  inner 
consciousness.  The  number  of  baskets  recorded  (14)  is  more 
than  twice  that  of  any  other  article  in  the  gift  list.  This  is  the 
only  kind  of  home  work  recorded  by  boys  which  gives  evidence 
of  influence  by  the  manual  training  work  of  the  school,  and  it  is 
doubtful  whether  any  would  be  made  by  children  who  were  not 
taught  to  do  so  at  school.  That  so  much  of  the  work  is  done 
outside  is  a  decided  argument  for  basketry  as  a  part  of  school 
handwork,  and  the  fact  of  its  almost  exclusive  connection  with 
the  gift  motive  would  suggest  attention  to  basketry  as  one  of 
the  most  effective  ways  in  which  the  school  may  encourage  the 
gift  habit. 

Perhaps  mention  .should  be  made  of  the  articles  mentioned 
about  ten  times  each  which  may  be  looked  at  as  forrning  a 
second  class:  They  are:  Houses,  14;  baskets,  14;  toy 
machines,  13;  weapons,  10;  picture  frarnes,  10;  bows  and 
arrows,  9;  other  shooters,   8;  theatres,   8. 

The  suggestion  offered  by  the  play.utility  list  regarding  the 
relative  popularity  of  the  different  projects  is  corroborated  in  a 
striking  way  by  a  similar  arrangement  of  Cros.swell's  toy  lists. 
The  same  12  articles  rank  first  in  both,  with  considerable  agree- 
ment respecting  position  within  the  group.  Below  are  given 
these  twelve  in  the  order  of  their  rank  in  our  own  list,  the  rank 
and  the  number  of  articles  for  each  being  expressed  by  open 
figures,  while  their  ranks  and  numbers  in  Croswell's  list  are 
enclosed  in  parentheses. 


1  (i)  Boats  64  (205)                7        (6)  Kites  5  (39) 

2  (8)  For  animals  28  (27)      8       (11)  Bean  shooters  5  (16) 

3  (3)  Wagons  12  (138)          9        (7)  Guns  3  (28) 

4  (5)  Balls  II  (42)                       f    (2)  Sleds  2  (151) 

5  (4)  Houses  9  (125)            10  -j     (9)  Whistles  2  (26) 

6  (11)  Bows  and  Arrowsg  (16)  t(io)  Stilts  2  (25) 


34 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 


The  evidence  from  these  two  lists  seems  to  the  writer 
suflficient  basis  for  an  emphatic  demand  that  the  elementary 
school  include  each  of  these  twelve  projects  at  least  once,  per- 
haps oftener,  as  a  part  of  its  constructive  work.  His  opinion  is 
that  there  are  very  few  programs  of  handwork  that  touch  even 
half  of  them  in  any  adequate  fashion. 


STATISTICS  OF  THE  GIRLS'  HANDWORK 


The  same  scheme  of  classification  is  used  as  for  the  work  of 
the  boys  except  that  a  special  place  was  made  for  the  food-mak- 
ing activities  to  avoid  the  responsibility  of  placing  them  in  any 
one  of  the  other  classes,  for  the  source  of  interest  here  seems  a 
peculiarly  even  combination  of  manipulation,  imitation  pleasure 
and  utility  pleasure.  This  need  not,  however,  be  called  a  de- 
parture from  the  first  tabulation  scheme,  as  not  a  single  boy  re- 
ported the  making  of  food  or  candy. 

The  results  looked  at  in  a  broad  way,  point  to  two  main 
classes  for  girl's  constructive  work:  (i)  The  making  of  things 
directly  connected  with  doll  play,  (2)  the  making  of  (more  or 
less)  useful  gifts ;  the  one  having  a  general  average  of  24  per 
cent,  the  other  of  40  per  cent.  The  only  other  class  with  any 
claim  at  all  to  a  place  beside  these  is  that  of  utility  with  14  per 
cent,  nothing  else  rising  above  6  per  cent. 


<    > 


STATISTICS  OF  THE  JGIRLS'  HAND-WORK 


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36  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

LIST     OF     THE    ARTICLES     MENTIONED    BY    GIRLS.        BOTH 

SCHOOLS 

Utility,  75  articles:  Baskets  7,  collars  5.  hats  5,  pen-wipers  4,  ties  5,  box- 
es 3,  shirt  waists  3,  skirts  3.  aprons  3,  trimming  hats  3,  mats  3,  purses  2,  pillows 
2,  pen  cushions  2,  picture  frames  2,  night  gowns  2,  dresses  2.  Napkin  ring, 
table  cover,  doily,  pillow  case,  quilt,  guimpe,  glove  case,  "patches,"  darning, 
wash  cloth,  "made  my  bed  during  summer,"  address  book,  sachet  bag, 
pencil  slip,  stockings,  slippers,  school  bag. 

Useful  Gifts ^  380  articles  :  Doilies  48,  baskets  27,  picture  frames  13, 
pin  cushions  13,  sewing  bags  10,  "embroidery"  10,  calendars  10,  pillows  9, 
mats  6,  needle  cases  6,  silk  bags  6,  pen  wipers  5,  tidies  5,  handkerchiefs  7, 
collars  5,  babies'  garments  5,  slippers  4,  pillow  cases  4,  book-marks  4,  dish 
towels  4,  napkin  rings  3,  books  3,  wash  cloths  3,  napkins  3,  towels  3, 
dusters  3,  capes  (crocheted)  3,  sachet  bags  3,  picture  mounting  2,  book  cov- 
ers 2,  card  cases  2,  glove  cases  2,  match-scratchers  2,  glove  menders  2,  nap- 
kins 2,  Christmas  tree  decorations  2,  stockings  2,  towels  2,  shaving-paper 
holders  2.  Apron  box,  shawl,  stamp  case,  picture  easel,  iron  holder,  copper 
bowl,  curtains,  toothbrush  case,  hair  receiver,  handkerchief  case,  hat,  shirt 
waist,  blotter,  envelope,  tapestry,  portfolio,  shaving  case,  neck  tie,  clipping 
holder,  postal  holder,  jewel  bag,  bib. 

<7zy/j-,  34  articles  :  Valentines  21,  Easter  cards  6,  Christmas  cards  3, 
Easter  eggs  3,  gilded  clam-shell  i. 

Play-utility,  282  articles  :  Dolls  and  dolls'  clothing  162,  boats  6,  ani- 
mals 3,  bean  bags  3,  balls  2,  houses  2,  whistles  2,  bows  and  arrows  2,  jump- 
rope  handles,pop-guns. 

Play -imitation,  10  articles:  Making  flowers  2.  Tent,  flag,  dish,  napkin 
rings  (for  nobody),  chair,  barn,  hay  wagon,  doll's  cap  (What  for  ?  "to  do 
something."     Whom  for?    The  ash  barrel.") 


The  doll  is  evidently  the  center  of  practically  all  of  a  girl's 
play-construction.  It  is  doubtless  motived  in  the  earlier  years 
by  what  was  called  in  the  case  of  the  boys  the  play.imitation  in- 
terest, and  later  becomes  the  counterpart  of  the  boys  play-utility 
work.  The  lists  of  articles  as  well  as  the  percentages  show  how 
very  few  toys,  not  directly  connected  with  doll  play,  are  made 
by  girls  of  any  age.  The  boat  and  animal  classes,  so  prominent 
with  the  boys,  are  almost  negligible  with  the  girls. 

The  figures  point  to  a  definite  decrease  in  this  sort  of  con- 
struction and  its  disappearance  at  about  fifteen  years.  But  the 
two  schools  differ  very  widely  in  their  doll  records : 


OF  CHILDREN  37 

Ages  8-9       lO-ii        12-14       15       8-15 


Horace  Mann  School 

18 

23 

8 

0 

13 

Ethical  School 

56 

36 

26 

0 

25 

Both 

34 

32 

17 

0 

24 

The  Ethical  Culture  School  thus  shows )i early  three  times  as 
much  doll-handwork  throughout  with  the  maximum  of  54  per 
cent  in  the  first  period,  while  in  the  Horace  Mann  School  it  is 
only  23  per  cent  with  the  children  of  lO-ii  years. ^ 

The  play  totals  of  boys  and  girls  show  striking   differences 
both  in  size  and  direction  of  change. 

Age  8-9  lo-ii   12-14  15    :     9  10    II   12   13   14  15    :  Av. 


Girls  43     43         26     10    :  48  44    40  25  30  22   10    :  34 

Boys  56    68         55  :  56  66    70  55  43  76  :  59 

The  boys'  play.construction,  nearly  always  more  than  half  of 
their  work,  reaches  3-4  in  the  fourteenth  year,  while  that  of  the 
girls,  always  less  than  half,  drops  to  22  per  cent  and  10  per  cent 
in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  years. 

As  the  doll  and  play  elements  weaken,  those  of  utility  take 
their  place  and  the  making  of  useful  gifts  is  seen  to  be  the  lead- 
ing occupation  of  these  girls,  though  here  again  there  is  a 
difference  between  the  schools.  This  work  increases  with  the 
age  of  the  girls  as   clearly  as  it  decreases  with  that  of  the  boys. 

Utility 
Age  8-9  lo-ii   12-14     15       9     10     II     12     13     14     15 

Girls  32       36       45        58     32     32     39     59     36     44     58 

Boys  34       24        14       —     21     26     14     II     15     15 

^These  curves  agree  in  a  general  way  with  that  of  the  period  of  general 
doll  interest  as  given  by  Hall  and  Ellis:  ''The  doll  passion  seems  to  be 
strongest  between  7  and  10  and  to  reach  its  climax  between  8  and  9.  .  .  . 
Girls  often  play  with  dolls  regularly  till  13  or  14,  when  with  the  dawn  of 
adolescence  the  doll  passion  generally  abates."  Pedagogical  Seminary, 
Vol.  4,  pp.  156-7. 


38  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

The  evidence  for  this  increase  with  age  is,  however,  somewhat 
weakened  by  the  59  per  cent  which  appears  in  the  twelfth  year 
with  its  14  girls,  when  that  of  the  fifteenth  year  is  only  58  per 
cent.  This  may  be  taken  as  showing  a  considerable  degree  of 
variability  in  individuals  without  wholly  contradicting  the 
direction  and  degree  of  development  indicated  by  larger  periods 
which  contain  20  or  30  cases  each. 


It  is  in  the  useful  things  made  for  one's  self,  however,  that 
we  find  the  most  noticeable  increase  with  age  and  the  one  strik- 
ing agreement  between  the  records  of  boys  and  girls. 


Age 

8.9 

10- 1 1 

12-14 

15 

9 

10 

II 

12 

13 

14 

15 

Girls 

9 

9 

17 

32 

7 

9 

4 

13 

18 

20 

32 

Boys 

5 

6 

10 

— 

5 

7 

5 

21 

25 

6 

It  would  seem  that  there  is  a  very  marked  turning  to  this  kind 
of  work  at  the  twelfth  year,  and  with  both  sexes.  If  the  making 
of  bread,  cake,  etc.,  wer^  included  here,  as  it  probably  should 
be,  this  increase  with  age  would  be  for  the  girls  still  further 
accented.  Reference  to  the  class  list  will  show  that  with  the 
girls  as  with  the  boys  it  is  here  that  the  largest  proportional 
variety  of  project  occurs,  and  that  about  half  of  the  things  men- 
tioned are  articles  of  clothing,  most  of  the  others  being  also 
needle  work  of  one  form  or  another. 


The   drawing  and   painting  recorded  by  girls  is  seen  to  be 
even  less  than  that  of  the  boys  though  very  close  to  it. 


Age 

8-9  10- 1 1 

12-14 

9 

10 

II 

12 

13 

14 

Gen.  Av. 

Girls 
Boys 

3       4 
3       4 

3 

4 

3 
3 

4 
4 

6 
2 

3 
3 

8 
4 

2 
5 

3 

4 

This  sex  similarity  in  pure  art  is  very  far  from  holding  good  in 
respect  to  applied  art.  For  a  very  large  part  of  the  doilies,  pil- 
low covers,  embroidery  work,  etc.,   which  constitute  so  much  of 


OF  CHILDREN  39 

the  girls'  work,  evidently  includes  a  considerable  art  element, 
while  there  is  comparatively  little  of  the  boys'  work  which 
shows  any  special  thought  about  or  interest  in  the  art  side. 

The  sex  differences  here  sh(nvn  may  be  summed  up  as  fol- 
lows . 

(i)  The  toy  is  the  boy's  leading  product  and  the  useful 
gift  that  of  the  girl. 

(2)  Doll  play  is  the  center  of  nearly  all  of  the  girl's  play- 
construction,  while  with  boys  the  doll  hardly  appears  at  all  al- 
though there  is  in  the  earlier  years  some  of  the  play.imitation 
construction  which  has  a  certain  resemblance  to  doll  play. 

(3)  The  girl's  play  construction  as  a  whole  is  always  less 
than  half  of  the  total  and  decreases  with  age,  the  boy's  is  more 
than  half  and  tends  to  increase  somewhat  up  to  the  age  of  four- 
teen at  least. 

(4)  The  useful-gift  class,  while  holding  about  a  third  of 
the  articles  with  both  sexes  under  ten  years,  decreases  to  one- 
sixth  with  the  boys  while  increasing  to  nearly  half  with  the 
girls.  The  element  which  we  have  called  vitality  appears  in  33 
per  cent  of  the  boys'  projects  and  in  only  2  per  cent  of  the  girls'. 

In  addition  to  these  differences  of  underlying  purpose  in  con- 
struction, it  is  further  to  be  noted  that  where  the  motive  is  the 
same,  the  things  made  with  the  work  and  materials  involved  are 
radically  different; — e.  g.,  although  boats  seem  to  belong 
exclusively  to  boys  and  dolls  to  girls,  both  seem  to  be  rooted  in 
very  much  the  same  sort  of  play  instinct.  As  will  later  be 
shown,  the  boy  depends  very  largely  upon  wood  as  his  material 
and  the  girls  upon  cloth.  The  only  marked  similarity  in 
materials  or  projects  appears  in  the  class  of  useful  gifts  which 
with  both  sexes  contains  quite  a  number  of  calendars,  picture 
frames,  and,  most  notably,   baskets. 

These  facts  regarding  sex  differences  would  point  toward  an 
almost  complete  separation  of  boys'  and  girls'  handwork  from 
the  ninth  year  up — so  far  as  the  question  of  interest  is  con- 
cerned, which  of  course  IS  far  from  the  only  consideration  in 
planning  a  course  of  study.  However,  such  a  conclusion  is 
limited  by  the  fact  that  we  do  not  know  how  far  external  sug- 
gestion has  given  form  to  the  work  which  we  have  studied.  Of 
course  an   element  of   that  must  be  present  in  every  case.     The 


40  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

fact  that  this  suggestion  is  accepted  and  built  upon  voluntarily 
by  the  child  is  evidence  that  it  meets  some  innate  need,  but  is 
no  evidence  whatever  that  any  one  of  a  hundred  other  lines  of 
work  if  suggested  would  not  meet  the  same  need  as  well  or 
even  better.  So  while  these  records  show  the  suitability  of 
certain  kinds  of  work,  they  do  not  prove  any  other  work  unsuit- 
able except  in  so  far  as  it  may  appear  that  the  suggestions  for 
the  other  work  were  actually  received  and  refused.  If  then  we 
can  assume  that  boys  and  girls  do  build  upon  the  same  body  of 
suggestion,  the  exclusion  of  articles  not  made  by  one  or  the 
other  sex  will  be  evidence  against  the  naturalness  of  that  type  of 
work  for  that  sex.  If  we  take  the  view  that  they  build  upon 
radically  different  suggestion  foundations,  we  can  draw  no  con- 
clusions about  the  unsuitability  of  a  line  of  work  from  the  mere 
fact  of  its  omission. 

Upon  this  question  it  is  to  be  said  on  the  one  hand,  that  the 
environment  of  boys  and  girls  of  these  ages  is  practically  identi- 
cal, that  they  see,  hear,  and  read  about  the  same  things  in 
home  and  school,  in  city  and  country,  and  that  consequently  the 
widely  separate  elements  of  that  environment  which  boys  and 
girls  select  for  reconstruction  in  play  must  have  a  peculiar 
adaptation  to  innate  needs  which  are  fundamentally  different  in 
the  sexes.  From  this  point  of  view  these  records  support  a  de- 
mand for  decided  sex  differences  in  school  handwork,  i.  e.,  so 
far  as  the  question  of  interest  is  concerned. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  may  be  said,  and  with  considerable 
force,  as  it  seems  to  the  writer,  that  while  both  boys 
and  girls  have  the  same  environment  there  is  at  pres- 
ent a  pressure  of  suggestion  from  without  that  has 
almost  the  force  of  law,  and  that  this,  rather  than  in. 
stinctive  tendencies,  is  the  reason  why  a  boy  becomes  so 
early  ashamed  to  sew  or  to  play  with  dolls,  and  a  girl  feels  it 
unlady-like  to  saw  a  board  or  sail  a  boat.  The  children  were 
asked  to  state  the  ages  of  brothers  and  sisters  in  the  hope  of  ob- 
taining light  on  this  question,  but  in  this  we  were  disappointed. 
Common  observation  furnishes  isolated  cases  in  which  girls  once 
started  do  supposedly  boys'  work  with  much  enthusiasm,  groups 
of  boys  have  been  known  to  become  deeply  absorbed  in  acquir- 
ing a  knowledge  of  "camp  cooking,"  etc.      But  only  experiment 


OF  CHILDREN  41 

in  giving  to  each  sex  the  other  kind  of  work  under  conditions 
peculiarly  favorable  to  it  in  respect  to  suggestion  can  determine 
the  actual  importance  in  education  of  the  sex  differences  so 
cleii'ly  shown  in  the  above  records.  For  the  present,  these 
must  be  regarded  as  bearing  only  on  the  question  of  what  kinds 
of  work  will  appeal  to  either  sex,  not  on  that  of  what  kinds  of 
work  will  not. 


The  Materials  Used 

Table  III  shows  the  same  articles  grouped  on  a  basis  of 
material,  within  the  same  age  groups.  As  in  the  motive  classi- 
fication, the  unit  is  not  the  number  of  articles  but  the  per  cent 
of  articles  of  a  given  material,  on  the  total  number  of  articles 
reported  by  that  particular  child. 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  attempt  has  been  made  with  the 
threj  most  general  materials,  wood,  cloth,  and  paper,  to  dis- 
tinguish artick'S  made  by  combination  of  different  parts,  from 
those  which  may  be  made  out  of  a  single  piece  of  the  material; 
e.  g.,  rabbit  houses,  sail  boats,  shirt  waists,  sewing  bags,  paper 
dolls'  furniture,  etc.,  are  placed  in  the  construction  class  (i), 
while  a  whittled  out  arrow  or  paper  knife,  a  doily  or  a  paper 
book  mark,  would  be  placed  in  the  non-construction  class  (2). 
Papvr  used  for  mere  drawing  and  painting  was  not  recorded  in 
the  ''paper"  class.  The  class  "metals"  includes,  in  addition 
to  I  he  few  which  were  wholly  of  metal,  those  in  which  metal 
other  than  nails  and  screws  was  used  as  an  important  material. 

These  tables  have  little  significance  on  the  genetic  side, 
the  only  regular  variations  with  age  being  those  which  might 
have  been  pretty  safely  prophesied  in  advance, —f.  ^.,  for  the 
boys:(i)  Increase  in  constructive  wood  work  coupled  with  a 
decrease  of  the  non-constructive;  (2)  Marked  decrease  in  use  of 
paper — 19  per  cent,  13  percent  and  10  per  cent  for  the  age- 
periods— most  of  the  decline  being  in  the  non-construction 
class;  (3)  Decrease  in  the  use  of  cloth— 10,  6,  4  per  cent  by 
periods;  (4)  An  increase  from  i  to  11  per  cent  in  the  use  of 
mctcils,  though  the  two  schools  vary  widely  here.  With  the 
girls  we  find  (i)  much  the  same  decrease  in  the  use  of  paper  as 


STATISTICS  OF  THE  BOYS'  HAND- WORK 


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4^     M 

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44  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

with  the  boys  — 25,  14,  11  per  cent;  (2)  Something  of  an  in. 
crease  in  the  use  of  cloth— 46,  51,  55  per  cent  (not  fully  sup- 
ported by  the  separate  record  of  the  Ethical  School). 

Since  all  but  one  of  these  changes  rome  within  a  range  of 
10  per  cent,  the  general  averages  may  be  taken  as  fair  indica- 
tions of  the  relatixe  suitability  of  these  different  materials  to 
the  needs  and  powers  of  the  children  during  this  whole  period, 
and  they  offer  direct  suggestions  of  some  value  regarding  the 
comparative  attention  to  be  given  in  the  school  room  to  work  in 
these  different  materials.  These  points  hardly  require  detailed 
comment,  being  sufficiently  suggested  by  the  figures  themselves, 
as  are  also  the  differences  between  boys'  and  girls'  materials. 


Materials.     General  Averages 


dj       -—      jr: 


,  ^    ^      '~[      >^      ri  ^ 


U 


u 


Boys         42  13  55  8  6  14  5  I  6  4  4  5  10 
Girls  3      3  4  II  15  39  13  52  8  9     5 


II.     THE    EARLY    INTERESTS  AND   EDUCATION 
OF  72  TALENTED  ENGINEERS 

Introduction 

It  will  hardly  be  questioned  that  the  lines  of  school  hand- 
work now  in  use  give  some  general  motor  training  which  is  of 
value  to  the  child,  and  some  knowledge  of  tools,  materials  and 
processes  which  is  different  in  degree  or  quality  from  what  he 
would  otherwise  acquire ;  or  that  these  various  acquisitions, 
skill,  knowledge,  inventiveness,  aesthetic  appreciation,  habits 
of  social  action,  and  the  like,  so  far  as  developed  thereby,  would 
increase  somewhat  the  child's  value  to  society. 

But  this  is  probably  as  strong  and  definite  a  statement  as 
would  meet  with  general  acceptance.  As  to  the  extent  of  such  re- 
sults, we  have  no  definite  knowledge,  and  there  is  the  widest 
difference  of  opinion  regarding  their  rel.itive  values  as  compared 
one  with  another  or  with  the  regular  school  subjects.  Eich  of 
these  elements  of  value  is  exalted  as  the  main  purpose  of  the 
work  by  the  adherents  of  one  or  another  system.  More  numer- 
ous still  are  those  who  hold  the  opinion  that  any  and  all  of  these 
values  are  too  insignificant  in  comparison  with  the  regular 
school  studies  to  justify  their  entrance  into  the  curriculum.  We 
may  as  well  admit  that  we  know  little  about  the  real  social 
significance  of  these  aims  and  less  about  the  efficiency  of  the 
means  used  to  obtain  them. 

We  have  no  positive  evidence  that  the  school  handwork 
affects  a  child's  general  motor  control  seriously,  or  even  appre- 
ciably. We  do  not  know  whether  or  how  far  the  el  ments  of 
knowledge  which  a  child  gains  through  handwork  differ  in  kind 
or  degree  from  those  gained  through  an  equal  time  given  to 
observation  and  study.  We  know  very  little  of  the  relationship 
between  the  lines  of  ability  required  or  cultivated  by  handwork 
and  those  which  belong  to  the  other  school  subjects.  The  known 
facts  here  are  so  few  that  one   need  consult   only   his   personal 


46  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

taste  and  inclination  in  deciding  whether  to  go  with  him  who 
says  that  'it  is  the  best  general  student  who  excels  in  con. 
structive  work,  or  with  him  who  claims  that  it  is  just  the  boy 
stupid  at  his  books  who  will  lead  his  class  in  these  more  con- 
crete and  practical  lines. 

The  situation  is  the  same  in  regard  to  the  specifically 
economic  values  of  manual  work.  We  do  not  know  whether  the 
adult  efficiency  of  men  in  any  walk  of  life  is  affected  appreciably 
by  the  handwork  now  found  in  the  school,  and  can  only  guess 
at  the  comparative  importance  from  this  point  of  view  of  the 
different  kinds  of  work  now  in  vogue.  It  would  indeed  seem 
probable  that  if  the  manual  work  were  much  increased  and 
specialized  it  would  materially  affect  the  future  efficiency  of 
those  children  who  are  destined  to  earn  their  living  in  the 
manual  occupations,  and  it  might  perhaps  have  equal  signifi. 
cance  for  those  who  are  to  become  industrial  leaders  and  organ- 
izers. But  the  school,  in  this  country  at  least,  has  not  dared 
to  offer  enough  special  work  to  justify  the  expectation  of  any 
such  results  in  a  marked  way,  for  lack  of  knowledge  as  to  what 
children  ought  to  receive  it.  Any  way  of  ascertaining  in  ad- 
vance what  children  would  or  should  enter  industrial  occupa- 
tions would  probably  make  possible  advantageous  adaptations  of 
their  early  education.  Such  problems  will  doubtless  become 
subjects  of  serious  study,  and  when  this  is  done  we  may  expect 
results  regarding  all  of  them  such  as  will  have  decided  influence 
on  educational  practice. 

Tests  will  be  devised  which  will  develop  facts  regarding  the 
influence  of  handwork  upon  general  motor  ability  and  its 
efficacy  in  developing  constructive  insight,  inventiveness,  and 
the  like;  the  correlations  of  skill  and  success  in  manual  lines 
with ^those  in  other  lines  may  be  easily  determined;  following 
the  later  records  of  children  from  different  types  of  schools 
would  give  suggestions  as  to  the  influence  of  the  curriculum  on 
choice  of  occupation ;  a  study  of  the  boyhood  characteristics  of 
men  in  different  occupations  ought  to  indicate  ways  of  judging 
what  type  of  occupation  a  given  child  would  incline  to  choose 
when  grown,  and  furnish  suggestions  regarding  what  sort  of 
specialization  at  school  is  desirable;— or  at  least  it  would  prove 
the  impossibility  of  any  such   fore-knowledge.     The  following 


OF  CHILDREN  47 

section  deals  with  material  of  this  last  sort  bearing  upon  a  single 
set  of  occupations. 

The  desirability  of  a  considerable  opportunity  for  specializa- 
tion was  admitted  after  a  long  struggle  so  far  as  the  colleges 
were  concerned,  and  more  recently  secondary  schools  have  also 
been  developing  an  elective  system.  But  in  connection  with 
the  elementary  school  the  question  has  hardly  been  discussed, 
in  this  country  at  least,  the  assumption  being  that  this  period 
must  be  given  wholly  to  lines  of  work  which  are  supposedly 
essential  to  all  callings  alike.  This  is  however  an  assumption 
rather  than  a  proved  fact,  and  the  possibility  of  advantageous 
specialization  within  these  school  years  seems  at  least  a  question 
worth  considering.  Perhaps  the  broadest  basis  for  any  specializa- 
tion here  would  be  the  division  of  the  children  into  two  classes; 
those  who  are  to  engage  in  constructive  and  mechanical  occupa- 
tions, and  those  who  are  not.  In  this  case  the  problem  of 
selecting  the  right  pupils  for  industrial  occupations  and  of  giv- 
ing them  the  right  kind  of  special  training,  is  at  present  identi- 
cal with  the  general  specialization  problem  as  regards  the  ele- 
mentary school.  The  class  of  workers-with-materials  apparently 
would  need  to  be  divided  into :  (i)  those  who  in  subordinate 
positions  perform  the  actual  operations  upon  the  materials, 
and  (2)  those  who  invent  new  methods  and  processes  and  suc- 
cessfully organize  industrial  effort. 

The  present  study  deals  only  with  this  second  class,  and 
is  a  consideration  of  facts  regarding  the  boyhood  environment, 
education,  activities,  and  interests  of  men  of  marked  con- 
structive talent,  with  a  view  to  determining  what  boyhood 
characteristics,  if  any,  give  promise  of  constructive  talent  in 
the  adult,  and  what  elements  of  education  and  experience,  if 
any,  regularly  precede  the  manifestation  of  this  ability  in  the 
adult. 

While  one  would  expect  the  main  significance  of  such  study 
to  lie  in  its  answer  to  the  question  of  how  definitely  and  in  just 
what  ways  boyhood  may  be  expected  to  indicate  adult  abilities, 
still  it  would  be  a  rather  extreme  emphasis  upon  innate  equip- 
ment as  the  only  factor  in  the  production  of  genius  which  would 
find  no  suggestions  for  education  in  the  facts  about  to  be  ex- 
amined regarding  the  boyhood  of   these  engineers.     Even  Gal- 


48  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

ton,  whose  Hereditary  Genius  gives  such  striking  evidence  in 
support  of  the  view  that  men  having  certain  types  of  inborn  gen- 
ius are  bound  to  attain  ultimately  a  given  degree  of  such  suc- 
cess regardless  of  environmental  influences  during  childhood/ 
dismisses  mechanical  talent  with  these  words : 

"I  do  not,  however,  see  my  way  clear  to  making-  a  selection  of  eminently 
gifted  engineers  because  their  success  depends  in  a  very  great  degree  on 
early  opportunities.""^ 

Such  an  admission — or  assumption — from  such  an  authority 
would  in  itself  seem  a  sufficient  warrant  for  the  attempt  to 
ascertain  just  what  the  early  opportunities  are  which  produce 
eminently  gifted  engineers. 

The  following  material  was  obtained  by  m:^ans  of  a  question- 
naire which  is  reproduced  on  the  following  page.  It  was  sent 
to  one  hundred  leading  members  of  the  American  Society  of 
Mechanical  Engineers.  As  a  suggestion  regarding  the  decree 
of  ability  here  repr.2sented  it  mavbe  stated  that  some  half-dozen 
('if  those  who  replied)  are  millionaires,  two  of  them  many  times 
such.  It  was  estim.ite.i  that  the  li^t  included  no  one  who,  if 
salaried,  would  receive  less  than  $7,500,  while  the  average 
salary-rate  was  placed  at  $12,000. 


Occupation Inhi^hf  yJ^^^'>'ji'J^^^) 

At  what  age  did  you  enter  upon  it? 

Did  you  choose  it  then  because  it  seemed  necessary? 

Because  it  seemed  the  most  profitable? 

Because  of  likin.^^  for  just  that  kind  of  work? 

Where  was  your  home  durin^  boyhood? 

Country Village Town(0':-™-J City 

With  what  lines  of  mechanical  work  were  you  thrown  into  close  contact,  if 

any? 

iQalton,  Hereditary  Genius,  pp.  37-49. 
2      "  «  «        p.  323. 


OF  CHILDREN  49 

In  what  lines  of  ability  or  taste  were  you  considered  exceptionally  gifted  dur- 
ing this  period? 

Please  number  the  following  studies  in  the  order   of  your  preference   for 
them  as  a  boy: 

Arithmetic History Geography Literature 

Science  

In  which  ones  was  your  work  exceptionally  good?  ' 

"  "  "  "  poor? 

At  what  age  did  you  leave  school  ? 

What  kinds  of  handwork  did  you  do  previous   to  your   17th  year,  and   at 
what  ages  respectively  ? 


Were  you  much  or  comparatively  little  interested  in  this  work?. 


Did  father  or  mother  possess  exceptional  manual  skill  ?. 
Father's  occupation  ? ... 


If  you  can  recall  them,  please  mention  below,  six  things    made   or  built  by 
you  previous  to  your  17th  year? 

If  vnable  to  recall  agf^pliasc  at  ate  Velicetv  uhut  years  :  e.  g.  8-llil2-14-15-16- 


Article 

Age 

Approx.  Size 

Purpose 

Remarks 

so  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

How  far  in  your  judgment  did  the  doing  of  such  work  as  a  child  affect  your 
choice  of  life  work  or  your  success  therein  ? 

If  your  experience  has  led  you  to  any  conclusions  respecting  the  place  of 
handwork  in  the  Elementary  School,  will  you  please  indicate  them  on 
the  other  side  of  this  sheet. 


Method  of  Tabulation 

Of  these  loo  men,  22  were  found  to  reside  in  Greater  New 
York,  and  these  were  selected  as  a  test  group  with  the  hope  of 
making  the  returns  absolutely  complete  within  its  limits.  A 
second  letter  to  the  six  who  ignored  the  first  was  all  that  proved 
necessary  to  accomplish  this.  Thus  the  New  York  group  repre- 
sents the  full  100  per  cent  of  returns,  and  is  valuable  as  a  check 
upon  the  results  to  be  obtained  from  the  whole  body  of  returns, 
which  included  72  replies.  As  will  be  seen,  however,  the  two 
classes  agree  very  closely ;  sufficiently  so  to  justify  the  assump- 
tion that  the  percentages  would  not  differ  sensibly  if  the  returns 
were  complete,  /.  e-,  that  the  28  who  failed  to  reply  did  so  for 
accidental  reasons  and  not  because  of  any  fundamental  differences 
with  respect  to  the  characteristics  we  are  to  study. 

The  names  were  also  separated  into  three  groups  thought 
to  represent  somewhat  different  types  of  mechanical  ability, 
group  A  including 'those  whose  success  was  primarily  due  to  ex- 
ceptional constructive  and  inventive  ability  as  such  ;  group  B, 
those  who  combine  large  constructive  ability  with  the  ability 
required  to  organize  and  conduct  successfully  a  large  con- 
structive or  manufacturing  enterprise ;  and  group  C,  men  whose 
success,  although  "along  strictly  constructive  lines,  has  been  due 
primarily  to  their  powers  of  organization  rather  than  to  their 
scientific  or  mechanical  ability. 

The  differences  between  these  classes  are  not  large  nor 
regular,  but  the  results  are  given  in  this  form  as  helping  to 
show  the  limits  of  variation  within  the  group  as  a  whole.  The 
fact  of  such  similarities,  joined  to  these  differing  types  of 
talent,  suggested  that  the  boyhood  characteristics  which  were 
found  common  here  might  have  no  special  application  to  men  of 
engineering  ability  but  might  belong  to  men  of  similar  talent  in 


OF  CHILDREN  51 

almost  any  occupation.  As  a  test  of  this,  thirty  men  equally 
successful  as  lawyers  were  asked  to  answer  the  same  set  of  ques- 
tions. The  results  will  be  given  beside  those  of  the  engineers. 
While  all  means  failed  to  extract  replies  from  more  than  nine 
of  the  lawyers,  these  returns  seem  worthy  of  some  regard  be- 
cause they  are  so  uniformly  negative  in  regard  to  the  mechanical 
element  in  their  make-up.  It  would  doubtless  be  the  most  un- 
mechanically  minded  of  this  group  who  would  be  the  least  likely 
to  attempt  to  answer  such  questions,  so  that  it  seems  fair  to  as- 
sume that  we  have  here  the  records  of  that  part  of  the  thirty 
which  possesses  the  strongest  mechanical  interest,  and  that  the 
completereturns  would  show  (if  possible)  still  less  of  the  charac. 
teristics  of  the  engineers  than  do  those  of  the  nine  lawyers  who 
replied. 

Their  reports  are  tabulated  in  the  same  manner  as  those  of 
the  engineers  and  are  given  in  a  parallel  column.  Though  so 
meagre,  they  seem  to  the  writer  a  suflEicient  indication  that  the 
early  evidences  of  mechanical  talent  are  not  to  be  found  to  any 
extent  in  boys  who  are  to  become  talenteJ  lawyers.  Whether 
the  lawyers  or  the  engineers  are  the  more  highly  specialized 
type,  cannot  be  determined  without  a  study  of  still  other  pro- 
fessions. 

As  the  New  Yorkers  were  distributed  quite  evenly  through 
these  three  classes,  it  was  necessary  to  make,  in  reality,  six 
separate  classes  instead  of  three.  The  results  with  these  classes 
support  the  general  averages  in  most  cases  and  are  not  recorded 
separately  in  the  text.  The  figures  are  in  every  case  the  percent- 
ages of  answers  upon  the  total  number  (of  sheets  returned) 
within  that  class ;  in  other  words,  each  class  record  reads  as  if 
based  on  100  replies.  ^The  number  of  replies  in  each  main  group 
is  as  follows : 


A  19  New  York   (complete)     22 

B  30  Lawyers  9 

C  23 

Total  72 


52  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

These  retuns  may  be  considered  under  the  heads  of  (i)  en- 
vironment, (2)  special  interests  and  abilities,  (3)  the  handwork 
actually  done  by  them,  (4)  their  views  and  opinions  regarding 
the  place  of  handwork  in  the  school. 


Environment 

Under  this  head  we  may  consider  the  information  regarding 
loca!ion  of  home,  parents'  occupation,  personal  contact  with 
constructive  and  mechanical  work,  etc.  The  percentages  show 
the  number  living  in  country,   city,   etc. 


Total 

N.  Y. 

A 

B 

C 

Lawyers 

Farm 

21 

18 

16 

23 

17 

0 

Village 

12 

14 

5 

20 

9 

II 

Town 

26 

9 

21 

23 

35 

0 

City  53  78  58       43      61  89 

If  the  distribution  of  the  population  at  the  time  of  the  boyhood 
of  these  men  b-  taken  into  account,  the  contrast  between  city 
and  country  is  still  further  heightenerl.  Only  three  of  them  are 
under  forty  years  of  age,  ai^d  the  average  age  is  estimated  at 
between  fifty-five  and  sixty.  S  )  their  boyhood  would  center  m 
a  general  way  about  the  yar  i860.  At  that  date  the  cities  of 
this  country  contained  16  per  cent  of  the  population.^  This  16 
per  cent  apparently  furnished  51  p.'r  cent  of  the  mechanical  en- 
gineers of  the  grade  of  ability  which  we  are  considering.  As 
the  proportion  of  urban  population  has  doubtless  more  than 
doubled  since  that  time  (being  22  per  cent  of  the  whole  in  1880 
and  29  per  cent  in  1890)^  it  is  seen  that  merely  upon  a  basis  of 
numbers  to  select  from  the  city's  present  advantage  over  the 
country  in  furnishing  these  men  is  very  much  increased.  Add 
to  that  the  undoubted  fact  that  it  is  on  the  whole  the  best  of  the 
country  population  which  the  city  has  been  adding  to  itself  dur- 
ing these  forty  years,  an  1  we  cannot  but  conclude  that  the  pro- 
portion of  talented  engineers-to.be  who  are  now  living  out  their 

^Mayo  Smith,  Statistics  and  Sociology,  p.  369. 
21  bid. 


OF    CHILDREN  53 

boyho'id  on  the  farm  is  far  below  this  21  per  cent,  and  that  the 
cities  are  at  present  producing  far  more  such  than  the  53  per 
cent  of  i860. 

Whatever  may  be  the  present  situation,  the  fact  that  forty 
years  ago  the  large  city  furnished  53  per  cent  of  such  men  as 
against  21  per  cent  from  the  country  contrasts  strongly  with 
widely  held  views  concerning  the  exceptional  value  of  farm  and 
c  )untry  life  as  education,  anJ  concerning  the  quality  of  mind 
that  it  develops.  In  so  far  as  this  type  of  ability  is  held  to  be  a 
thing  inborn,  these  figures  indicate  that  the  city  succeeded 
several  decades  ago  in  winning  the  1  irger  proportion  of  the  best 
blood— the  best,  that  is  for  this  i)urpose.  Regarding  their  bear- 
ing on  early  opportunity  as  a  factor  in  the  production  of' 
mechanic.il  ability,  one  would  have  said  that  this  would  be 
just  the  kind  of  ability  to  profit  in  a  peculiar  degree  from  the 
environment  and  experiences  of  farm  and  country  life.  Think- 
ing of  its  varied  contact  with  the  physical  world,  its  demands  of 
all  sorts  for  amateur  construction,  building  repairs  and  the  like 
which  must  often  be  met  by  novel  and  ingenious  uses  of  the  tools 
and  materials  lying  at  hand,  one  would  b^  quite  likely  to  con- 
clude that  this  life  would  be  far  the  most  effective  in  develop- 
ing an  acquaintance  with  materials  and  a  versatility  in  discover- 
ing and  adapting  means  to  ends  which  would  count  in  an  excep. 
tional  degree  toward  a  constructive  or  mechanical  career. 
Evidently,  however,  the  farm  has  no  great  significance  here. 
It  would  seem  either  that  erivironment  is  an  unimportant  factor 
compared  to  inb  )rn  genius  and  that  the  city  has  sometime  since 
possessed  itself  of  the  families  that  contain  most  of  the  genuises, 
or  else  that,  advantageous  as  the  country  environment  appears 
to  bo,  the  city  somehow  surpas><es  it  as  a  soil  for  at  least  this 
particular  kind  of  t  dent.  When  we  come  to  examine  the 
features  of  m  'chinical  cnvir mme  it  most  often  mentioned,  we 
shall  see  indications  th  it  the  city  does  furnish  certain  important 
elements  of  experience  which  the  country  lacks. 


54  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

Fathers'  Occupations 


Total 

N.   Y. 

A 

B 

C 

Lawyers 

Mechanical          57 

59 

47 

57 

65 

0 

Farmer                 12 

5 

16 

17 

4 

0 

Non-mechanical  30 

45 

37 

27 

30 

100 

The  general  average  of  57  per  cent  of  mechanically  employed 
parents  against  30  per  cent  who  were  not  is  maintained  approxi- 
mately in  the  sub  groups,  and,  as  is  natural,  corresponds  in  a 
general  way  to  the  proportion  of  parents  having  mechanical 
skill.  (68  per  cent  yes,  24  per  cent  no. )  Of  course  this  some- 
what better  chance  which  the  son  of  a  mechanically  employed 
father  evidently  has  of  gaining  distinction  in  the  same  line  may 
be  attributed  to  heredity  or  environment  according  to  one's 
taste.  The  fact  that  the  parents  of  mechanical  skill  are  a  little 
more  numerous  than  those  of  mechanical  occupation,  gives 
emphasis  to  the  heredity  factor.^ 


Extent  of  Mechanical  Environment 

The  question,  "With  what  lines  of  mechanical  work  were 
you  thrown  into  close  contact,  if  any.-*"  brings  the  most  sug- 
gestive facts  regarding  environment.  The  following  list  gives 
the  lines  of  work  mentioned  first  or  most  prominently  by  each 
man, — some  men  having  mentioned  several: 

Total. 
Mechanical  environment  84 
Farm  4 

Non-mechanical    environ- 
ment 12  18  56     13         67 

These  answers  may  repay  a  more  detailed  analysis. 

^With  the  lawyers,  five  fathers  were  the  same,  two  were  clergymen,  one 
a  banker,  one  not  ascertained. 


[.   Y. 

A 

B 

C 

Lawyers 

82 

90 

80 

87 

II 

0 

5 

10 

0 

22 

OF  CHILDREN 


55 


Cases 

Cases 

Machinery 

45  (63  %) 

Other  Mechanical  15 

121%  ) 

Machine  shop 
Steam  engine 
work, 
Steam  ship  bldg. 
Engine  building. 

24 

5 
3 
2 

Carpentry 
Blacksmithing, 
Railroad, 
'  'Saw  everything 
I  could" 

6 

2 

I 

I 

Rolling  mill, 

2 

Foundry, 

I 

Carriage  factory 

2 

"Saw  various 

Sugar  machinery 

I 

factories" 

I 

Bolt  factory. 
Factories, 

I 
I 

"Boiling  in 
vacuum" 

I 

Iron  works, 
Textile  machin- 

I 

Masonry, 
"General" 

I 
I 

ery, 

Steam    saw  mill. 

I 

I 

Pattern  making, 

I 

Non-Mechanical  10  (14%) 
Farm,  3 

"None  at  all"         7 
Blank,  2 

In  some  cases  more  than  one  line  of  activity  was  mentioned. 
Farm  and  carpentry  work  were  mentioned  three  or  four  times 
each  as  subordinate  factors,  and  factories  in  the  same  way  seven- 
teen times. 

Eighty.four  per  cent  then  had  some  direct  contact  with 
mechanical  work,  63  per  cent  with  machinery  in  one  form  or  an. 
other,  and,  if  we  include  the  engine  work  and  rolling  mills, 
exactly  50  per  cent  give  first  place  to  their  contact  directly  with 
machine-shop  work,  — the  special  line  in  which  nearly  all  of  them 
achieved  their  success.  The  occupation  which  ranks  next  to 
that  of  the  machine  shop  is  carpentry  with  only  8  per  cent— this 
in  spite  of  the  obvious  fact  that  the  number  of  boys  having 
contact  with  carpentry  work  would  exceed  many  times  the  num- 
ber having  contact  with  machine-shop  work. 


56  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

This  striking  and  detailed  similarity  between  early  environ- 
ment and  the  field  of  adult  success  may  be  explained  in  at  least 
three  ways.  It  may  be  held  that  the  mechanical  elements  in  the 
environment  have  been  sought  out  by  the  boy  himself  in  re- 
sponse to  innate  craving.  The  spirit  of  the  reply,  "Saw  every- 
thing I  could,"  is  reflected  in  a  number  of  answers.  It  would 
seem  that  city-bred  boys  in  general  would  have  an  approxmately 
equal  chance  at  machine  shops,  etc.,  and  therefore  that  the 
city-bred  lawyer  who  reports  so  little  mechanical  environment 
could  probably  have  had  such  opp')rtunitiei  as  readily  as  the 
city-bred  engineer  (provided  that  the  father  of  the  later  were 
not  himself  a  machinist,  which  he  was  not  in  39  p^r  cent  of  the 
cases  of  strictly  machine  shop  environment).  From  this  point 
of  view  the  early  environment  becomes  in  a  sense  an  early 
record  of  natural  and  enduring  mechanical  interests  and  abili- 
ties, and  evidently  a  fairly  detailed  and  reli.ible  record  in  at 
least  half  the  cases  of  large  mechanical  success. 

This  early  acquaintance  with  mechanics  may,  on  the  other 
hand,  be  looked  at  as  a  training  which  contributed  in  a  direct 
way  to  the  later  success  of  these  men,  and  it  is  to  be  said  here 
that  many  of  those  who  add  comments  on  schoiJ  manual  work 
speak  very  appreciatively  of  their  boyhood  contact  with  shops 
and  factories.  In  the  third  place,  it  may  be  thought  of  not  as 
a  direct  cause  of  the  success  but  as  the  means  of  h  ading  into 
mechanical  occupations  boys  of  such  ability  as  would  perhaps 
make  them  equally  successful  in  many  other  lines  of  work. 
Whether  such  environment  serves  as  a  means  of  training  or  as 
simply  the  means  for  an  intelligent  choice  of  occupation,  it  may 
be  considered  a  definite  educational  asset  for  any  boy.  An 
illustration  of  its  importance  is  found  in  one  record  of  a  lawyer's 
son  who  reports  "no  mechanical  environment  whatever;"  he 
graduated  from  college  at  19,  studied  law  three  years,  practiced 
two  years,  and  then  went  to  an  engineering  school,  graduating 
and  getting  to  work  at  28.  A  number  of  men,  as  will  later 
appear,  value  school  handwork  chiefly  as  a  means  of  discovering 
one's  natural  tastes,  some  of  them  questioning,  and  with  reason 
as  it  seems  to  the  writer,  whether  the  kinds  of  work  generally 
carried  on  help  in  this  way  to  any  great  extent. 


OF  CHILDREN  57 

The  fact  that  50  per  cent  of  these  men  had  contact 
with  definite  machine-shop  work  shows  a  detail  of  cor- 
relation between  environment  and  success  in  engineering 
that  was  hardy  to  be  expected  in  ability  of  this  rank, 
though  it  might  be  natural  enough  with  the  ordinary 
machine-shop  hand.  It  seems  to  support  in  a  consid- 
erable degree  Galton's  view  of  the  importance  of  early  oppor- 
tunity. It  would  be  interesting  to  know  whether  leading  men 
of  other  constructional  occupations,  such  as  architects,  mining 
engineers,  or  textile  manufacturers,  had  during  boyhood  an 
equally  intimate  connection  with  the  line  which  they  now 
follow,  apart  from  any  connection  with  it  which  their  fathers 
might  have  had. 

This  detail  of  correlation  throws  added  light  on  the  relation 
of  farm  experience  to  engineering  ability — or  rather  the  lack  of 
relation— which  has  already  been  discussed.  Of  the  1 5  men  who 
are  recorded  as  having  lived  on  a  farm,  only  three  report  the 
farm  activities  as  the  sole  or  leading  mechanical  experience  of 
their  boyhood.  The  other  twelve  had  or  found  access  to  neigh- 
boring saw-mills,  factories,  and  the  like.  Thus  the  real 
effectiveness  of  the  farm' as  an  environment  productive  of  en. 
gineering  ability  should  be  rated  at  4  per  cent  rather  than  the  21 
per  cent  as  indicated  by  mere  location,  the  most  obvious  ex- 
planatioij  being  that  farm  experience,  while  strong  on  the 
general  constructive  side,  is  too  far  removed  from  engineering 
to  contribute  much  toward  the  success  of  an  engineer,  or  to 
satisfy  his  interests.  The  city  with  its  factories  and  machine- 
shops  evidently  meets  either  or  both  of  these  requirements  much 
more  effectively.  That  so  few  (13  per  cent)  make  any  mention 
at  all  of  carpentry,  the  most  generally  accessible  type  of  con- 
structive work,  is  an  added  emphasis  upon  the  relation  between 
actual  machine  shop  experience  during  boyhood  and  the  making 
of  a  successful  engineer. 

The  following  table  gives  an  idea  of  the  correlation  between 
mechanical  enviroment  and  the  occupation  of  the  father: 


58  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

Fathers'  Occupations 

No.  of     Environment    Machinists  &    Other  mechani-    Non.me- 
cases  of  Boys         Manufacturers  cal  chanical 

36     Machinery  en- 
vironment, 61%  11%  28% 

24     Other  mechanical 

environment  $4%  8%  37% 

12     Non-mechanical 

environment,  25%  17%  58% 

Thus  of  the  36  boys  who  went  from  a  definite  machine- 
shop  environment  into  the  machinist's  profession,  only  22  (61 
per  cent)  had  fathers  who  were  machinists,  the  other  14  (40  per 
cent)  procuring  this  experience  independently  of  the  father's 
occupation.  The  fact  here  shown  that  nearly  half  of  those  re- 
cording no  mechanical  environment  had  fathers  who  were  em- 
ployed mechanically,  would  suggest  that  their  denial  of  such 
experience  be  taken  with  some  reservation  and  that  the 
mechanical  environment  class  may  in  reality  be  considerably 
more  than  84  per  cent  of  the  whole. 

Special  Interests  and  Abilities 

With  regard  to  interest  taken  in  actual  performance  of  me- 
chanical work  during  boyhood,  the  answers  affirming  such  inter- 
est generally  do  so  with  a  positiveness  and  detail  which  marks  it 
as  the  dominant  one  of  the  period.  The  figures  run  very  closely 
parallel,  even  in  the  sub-groups  to  those  on  mechanical  environ- 
ment. A  number  failed  to  reply  to  the  question,  as  is  indi- 
cated by  combining  the  two  sets  of  figures. 


Total  N.  Y. 

A 

B       C 

Lawyers 

83              82 

89 

83     83 

II 

8                9 

II 

7       9 

67 

Mechanical  Interests 

No  Mechanical  Interest     8 

The  answers  relating  to   the   lines    of    exceptional   ability 
shown  in  boyhood  may  be  mentioned  here.     Doubtless  modesty 


A 

B 

C 

Law 

52 

66 

48 

0 

21 

7 

17 

33 

21 

3 

9 

33 

OF   CHILDREN  59 

was  one  of  the  reasons  for  the  20  per  cent  of  omitted  or  evasive 
answers.     The  answers  given  are  as  follows : 

Total  N.  Y. 

Exceptional  Mechan- 
ical Ability               57  55 

Exceptional   Ability 

(other)                        14  18 

No  exceptional  Ability  10  5 

Less  than  one-fifth  of  the  57  per  cent  who  plead  guilty  to 
the  possession  of  exceptional  mechanical  ability  mention  any 
other  youthful  specialty  and  we  shall  later  find  still  more 
evidence  to  indicate  that  these  boys  as  a  class  were  far  from  uni- 
versal geniuses.     The  non-mechanical  lines  were: 

Mentioned  as  co-ordinate  with  early  mechanical  talent: 

Freehand   drawing    4;   music,   chemistry,     mathematics,    i 

each. 

Mentioned  as  the  only  lines  of  early  talent :     Freehand 

drawing,  music,  botany,  willingness  to   work,   sticking  at 

work,  knowledge    of   animals,  plants   and  fishes,   "organiz. 

ing   plans     of     all   kinds,"  "memory    and    declamation," 

"eating,  growing  and  reading,"   i  each. 

Several  of  the  ten  who  deny  that  they  had  any  special  talent 
at  all,  describe  things  made  at  fourteen  or  fifteen  years  of  age, 
which  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  writer's  experience  and  ob- 
servation would  indicate  very  decided  mechanical  ability.  The 
writer  is  tempted  to  venture  the  guess  that  nearer  90  per  cent 
than  57  per  cent  of  them  were,  even  as  boys,  gifted  mechanically. 


Ability  in  School  ^Vork 

The  comparative  interests  and  abilities  of  these  men  in  the 
regular  school  studies  show  a  definite  and  detailed  correlation 
with  their  mechanical  tendencies. 

As  a  group  they  seem  to  have  been  a  strong  but  poorly 
balanced  set  of  students.  Not  one  claims  to  have  been  poor  in 
all  studies,  and  only  3  per  cent  admit  themselves  exceptionally 


^  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

good  in  all.  Twelve  per  cent  rank  themselves  as  average  in  all 
and  one  omits  the  question.  The  remainder  admit  some  excep- 
tional strength  or  weakness — generally  both— in  their  school 
work.  Omitting  all  equivocal  answers,  such  as  "arithmetic  if 
any,"  we  find  that  8i  percent  admit  exceptional  strength  in 
some  study  and  60  per  cent  some  exceptional  weakness,  while 
56  per  cent  place  themselves  in  both  groups. 

The  lawyers,  on  the  other  hand,  seem  a  much  better 
balanced  group.  Fifty-six  per  cent  admit  with  various  apologies 
that  they  were  good  all  around  students  (against  3  per  cent  above) 
and  not  one  says  he  was  "average  in  all."  These  facts  may  be 
stated  in  tabular  form  : 

Engineers  Lawyers 

Weak  in  all  o  o 

Average  in  all  I2  u 

Strong  in  all  3  56 

Strong  in  something  81  100 

Weak  in  something  60  44 

Both  strong  and  weak  56  44 

The  following  table  shows  how  this  strength  or  weakness 
divided  itself  among  the  different  studies: 


Exceptional  Strength 


Total. 

N.   Y. 

A 

B 

C 

Lawyers 

Science 

41 

32 

49 

33 

43 

0 

Arithmetic 

48 

36 

58 

40 

48 

44 

Geography 

I] 

13 

II 

13 

9 

0 

History 

8 

5 

0 

13 

9 

56 

Literature 

3 

0 

5 

3 

0 

22 

(Classics)        56 


Science 

I 

Arithmetic 

10 

Geography 

6 

History 

7 

Literature 

25 

0 

0 

0 

4 

13 

5 

7 

17 

0 

5 

7 

4 

5 

5 

10 

4 

OF  CHILDREN  6i 

Exceptional  Weakness 

Total  N.   Y.         A       B        C  Lawyers 

22 

22 

O 

O 

37        20        26  O 

Arithmetic  is  seen  to  have  a  decidedly  varied  record. 
While  it  is  the  subject  in  which  most  men  report  special  strength, 
yet  it  is  second  only  to  literature— though  by  a  long  interval— in 
respect  to  weakness.  So  its  position  is  perhaps  less  definite  than 
that  of  science  in  which  41  per  cent  reported  strength  but  only  i 
per  cent  weakness.  Thus,  while  strength  in  either  arithmetic  or 
science  would  not  in  itself  go  very  far  toward  suggesting  that  a 
given  boy  would  ultimately  belong  to  this  class  of  engineers, 
exceptional  weakness  in  science  would  seem  to  be  a  very  decided 
bar  to  his  ever  doing  so.  Exceptional  strength  in  literature  would 
also  seem  to  be  something  of  a  bar,  being  possessed  by  only  3 
per  cent.  The  lawyers'  records  form  a  strong  contrast  here 
also,  their  only  weakness  being  in  arithmetic  and  science,  while 
most  of  their  strength  is  in  history  and  the  classics. 


Relative  Preference  for  Studies 

The  responses  regarding  relative  preference  for  and  interest 
in  the  school  studies  show  a  remarkably  definite  interest  rank  for 
each  one  in  the  collective  engineer-mind.  The  question  was : 
"Number  the  following  studies  in  the  order  of  your  preference 
for  them  as  a  boy."  The  following  tables  show  the  number  of 
times  (raised  to  100  cases)  each  rank  was  assigned  to  each  sub- 
ject, and  should  be  read  both  downward  and  horizontally.  The 
more  significant  numbers  are  in  italics. 


62 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 


Rank 
Science 
Arithmetic 
Geography 
History 
Literature 


Engineers 

Total 
I St  2d  3rd  4th   5th 

36  37     ^  10 

4g  \<^  \\  6     6 

10  14  28  17    10 

4  8  24  >    14 

/  6    7  IS    49 


N.  Y. 

I  St  2nd  3rd  4th  5th 

^5  36  o  5  O 

45  18  14  5  9 

14  14  2<?  14  9 

5  9  23  ^(?  18 

o  9  15  18  ^/ 


Lawyers 

o     o  II    33  33 
22     II  22     o   44 

o     II  44    33     o 
5<5    II  II     II     o 


Science 

Arithmetic 

Geography 

History 

Literature         11    56    o     11 


o 


Though  arithmetic  has  the  largest  number  of  firsts,  it  is 
clear  that  science  is  the  subject  most  generally  preferred,  since 
73  per  cent  give  it  first  or  second  place  and  only  one  ranks  it 
lower  than  third  on  this  scale  of  five,  arithmetic  having  twelve 
below  this  point.  The  unpopularity  of  literature  is  as  noticable 
as  the  preference  for  science,  since  49  per  cent  give  it  the  low- 
est rank  against  one  who  places  it  first.  History  and  geography 
lie  between  these  and  have  clearer  relative  rank  than  one  would 
expect,  the  one  having  a  decided  maximum  in  the  4th  place,  and 
the  other  belonging  almost  as  definitely  in  the  third. 

With  the  lawyers  the  order  of  preference  is  exactly  inverted 
in  every  detail,  with  the  exception  of  the  somewhat  natural  lead 
of  history  over  literature.  Arithmetic  has  the  largest  number 
of  fifths  but  also  quite  a  number  of  admirers,  fully  sustaining 
the  rather  irregular  position  it  has  held  heretofore.  Science  is 
fifth  here  in  exactly  the  same  sense  in  which  it  was  first  with  the 


OF  CHILDREN  63 

engineers,  having  no  firsts  nor  seconds  and  the  largest  total  of 
fourths  and  fifths. 

Geography  is  condemned  by  both  lawyers  and  engineers  to 
the  same  dead  level  of  mediocrity.  As  taught  thirty  years  ago,  it 
evidently  did  not  involve  enough  science  to  arouse  either  the 
hostility  of  the  one  class  or  the  enthusiasm  of  the  other. 

The  interest  evidenced  by  the  engineers  in  science  has 
something  of  a  counterpart  in  the  interest  of  eminent  scientific 
men  in  mechanics.  Of  those  studied  by  Gallon,  a  considerable 
number  possessed  very  marked  mechanical  aptitude  and  taste.  ^ 
The  two  professions  certainly  seem  to  have  a  great  deal  in  com- 
mon, and  it  is  quite  likely  that  many  or  most  of  the  men  in 
either  would  succeed  fairly  well  in  the  other.  It  would  be 
natural  to  suppose  that  a  man  would  turn  to  the  one  or  the 
other  according  as  theoretic  or  practical  interests  were  dominant 
with  him,  and  this  view  is  supported  with  some  definiteness  by 
the  reports  of  both  classes  regarding  actual  work  done.  For 
the  scientists,  while  describing  some  interesting  productive 
construction  done  during  boyhood,  speak  much  oftener  of  a 
tendency  to  "experiment"  ;  while,  as  we  shall  see,  the  engineers 
report  very  little  pure  experimentation,  practically  all  of  their 
work  being  productions  of  concrete  things,  with  "tinkering,'' 
"repairs,"  etc.^ 


Constructive  W^ork  During  Boyhood 

A  more  concrete  notion  of  their  mechanical  interests  is  to 
be  obtained  from  the  statements  of  these  men  regarding  the  con. 
structive  work  which  they  actually  carried  on  as  boys. 

Of  the  72  men,  57  mention  or  describe  work  done.  Four  have 
done  none  at  all,    i  "nothing  of  importance,"  2  "cannot   recall 

"^English  Men  of  Science^  pp.  124-126. 

-The  following,  from  one  of  the  engineers,  is  an  interesting  illustration 
of  the  combination  of  these  motives :  "As  to  articles  made  by  me  during 
boyhood,  they  consisted  principally  of  carts,  wagons,  sleds,  etc.,  used  by  me 
and  my  brother  for  our  own  amusement.  I  might  add  here  that  I  was  never 
entirely  satisfied  with  any  of  these  constructions  until  they  were  subjected 
to  loads  and  punishments  of  various  kinds  until  they  were  destroyed,  when 
the  building  of  a  new  one  came  in  order." 


64  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

anything,''  while  8  ignored  the  question.  A  list  of  these  arti- 
cles follows.  They  are  divided  into  three  classes.  List  (a) 
contains  those  which  display  in  a  striking  way  mechanical  taste 
and  mechanical  ability;  things  the  making  of  which  would  have 
little  or  no  motive  for  the  unmechanical  boy  and  would  prove 
too  difficult  for  any  who  lacked  exceptional  mechanical  ability. 
List  (b)  includes  the  toys  and  articles  connected  with  play 
which  the  average  boy  is  likely  to  make  or  try  to  make  for  his 
own  use, — doubtless  with  less  success  than  the  present  group. 
List  (c)  is  of  the  articles  useful  from  an  adult  point  of  view. 
The  number  following  the  name  of  the  article  means  primarily 
the  total  number  of  times  the  article  was  mentioned.  But  in  all 
the  more  serious  projects,  it  means  also  the  number  of  men  who 
mentioned  it  (unless  the  contrary  is  stated.)  Many  of  the 
smaller  articles  (/.  e.,  carts,  boats,  tops,  etc.)  were  usually 
mentioned  in  the  plural  and  where  this  was  done  the  plural  is 
retained  in  the  lists. 


(a)  Special  Mechanical  ^A^ork 

64  projects,  ^2  boys 

Steam  Engine         24  Turning  lathe  5 

(21  boys,  2  others  in  17th  (One  a  converted  flax- 

year.)  I  in. — 2  in.  cylinders.  spinning  wheel. ) 

One,  made  at  9  years,  was  "no 
good  for  lack  of  exhaust." 
Same  boy  made  one  success- 
fully at  15  years. 
The  earliest  success  was 
at  12  years. 

Electrical  appliances  15      Working  models  of  machines,  etc.    10 
(6  boys)  Weaving  machine 

Telegraph  lines  3,  Mowing  machine 

2  of  them  I  mile  long  Hay  press 

Dynamo  2  Toy  saw  mill  at  9  years 

Telephone  2  — "run  by  means  of    spin. 

Frictional  Elec.  Machine  2  ning  wheel  —  would  saw 

Leyden  jars  2  bread" 


OF  CHILDREN 


65 


Telegraph  relay  i 
Telegraph  self- 
adjusting  relay  i 
Microphone  i 
Arc  light  I 
Induction  coil  i 


Printing  Press  2 
Hand  fire  engine  2 
Spring  automobile  i 
Bridge  models  i 


Very  large  kites  i 


Boat  models   7 

Full  rigged  brig  3 
Model  of  steamer  i 
Side  wheel  steamer  model 
Propeller  model  i 
Tug  model  i 

Water  wheels  4 

Perpetual  motion  machine  2 


"Much  experimental  work,   parts 
of  machines,  etc.''   i 


(b) 

Sled  9 

Carts  and  wagons  9 

"Goat  and  calf  wagons' 


Boats  (for  use)  9 
Row  boats  7 
Sail  boats  i 
Foot  power  boats  i 

Boats  (toys)  8 
Animal  houses  4 
Animal  traps  2 
Bows  and  Arrows  4 
Kites  3 
Cross  bow  3 
Pop  gun  I 


Other  Play  Articles 

6y  projects 

Squirt  gun  i 
Pistol   I 
'  I  Gun  I 

Bicycle  i 

Tin  keyed  bugle  i 

Horse  shoe  nail  i 

Cannon  i 

Chess  men  i 

Carving  birds  i 

Tricycle  i 

Violin— "learned   to 

play  it"  I 
Railroads  i 
Wooden  velocipede  i 
Dams  I 

Peg  tops— "outspin  any  I 
have  ever  seen''   i 
"All  sorts  of  things  ever 
made  by  a  boy"  i 


66 


THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 


(c)  Things  for  Use 

60  items 


Fences  2 

Fret  saw  work  2 

Wheel  barrows  27 

Yarn  frame  2 

Turned  articles  2 

Tinkering  2 

Tool  chests 

Desk 

Ladders 

Taps  and  dies 

Cellar  stairs 

Rat  traps 

Coal  scuttles 

Silk  reels 

Cider  mill 

Go-cart  for  baby 

Core  points 

Pipe  patterns 

Grinding  machine 

6  room  house  (17  years) 

Porch  to  home 

Altered  house 

Barn— "built  wholly  by 

boys  under  17  years." 
3  in.  obj.  telescope 
Gun  stock 
Jig  saw 
Mechanical  fly  brush — 

"in  use  many  years" 
Register  for  seeds 
Cogs  for  main  wheel 


To  the  writer  the  preponderance  of  the  steam  engine  is  the 
most  striking  feature  of  the  first  list, — or  of  any  of  them.  Some 
of  the  individual  records  are  worth  quoting  verbatim,  e.  g. — 


Bolster 

Spoked  wagon  wheel 
Compound-lever     cheese- 
press— "used  many  years." 
Improved  gavel  fork 
"Tables,  benches,   lounge, 
cabinet,    closet,  fences, 
board  walks,  out  buildings, 
tombstones, — toys  never." 
Cabinet 
Setting  grates 
Laying  brick 
Steel  tools 
Ox  yokes 
"Would  use  and  repair 
any  kind  of  machine" 
"Mostly   repairs" 
"Repairs" 
Was  making  "a  living"   after 

12  years 
Ran  loom  half  the  year 

12.15  years 
Textile  work  in  factory  after 
12  years 


OF  CHILDREN  67 

No.  2.  "Beam  Engine  (steam)  1-2"  x  i"  cylinder.  Age: 
14-15  years.     Purpose:     "To  see  it  operate. " 

Remarks:  "Surreptitiously  made  furnace  in  outhouse,  to 
cast  cylinder.  Stole  the  fuel  and  the  bricks  with  which  furnace 
was  made.  Made  taps  and  dies  with  3  cornered  file  originating 
thread. ' ' 

No.  47.  "Engines, — small, — from  15  years  up.  Purpose: 
"Chiefly  as  means  of  utilizing  a  foot  power  engine  lathe  and  to 
indulge  my  propensity  to  'make   things'  ." 

No.  60.  "Steam  Engine, — Cylinder  i  1-2"  x  4".  Age  12 
years.     Purpose:     "To  play  with.     Have  it  yet.'' 

This  last  is  the  only  case  of  an  engine  made  at  an  age  as 
early  as  12  years.  The  maker  is  now  vice  president  of  one  of 
the  largest  manufacturing  establishments  in  New  York  State, 

The  significance  of  such  work  seems  about  the  same  on  the 
side  of  early  abilities  and  on  that  of  early  interests.  As  to  the 
ability  required  :  The  writer  has  seen  a  number  of  boys  quite 
gifted  mechanically  make  the  attempt  with  great  care  and 
patience  but  without  success.  This,  and  his  recollections  of  the 
trials  and  pitfalls  encountered  by  a  quite  ingenious  friend  who 
was  barely  successful  with  his  engine  (of  the  simplest  type)  at 
18  years,  convince  him  that  the  making  before  the  17th  year  of 
engines  like  those  recorded,  proves  the  possession  in  boyhood 
of  mechanical  ability  of  a  very  high  order.  As  the  early  inter- 
ests indicated,  the  steam  engine  is  in  a  peculiar  degree  the  most 
typical  product  and  the  most  important  tool  of  the  mechanical 
engineering  profession.  While  the  engines  of  these  boys  were 
sometimes  utilized  later  on  in  sawing  wood  or  running  churns, 
the  purpose  is  generally  stated  as  "mainly  for  fun'';  "to  satisfy 
my  propensity  for  making  things  that  would  go, "  etc.  So  it 
may  be  fairly  said  that  those  who  made  them  had  shown  before 
the  age  of  17  years  not  merely  a  pronounced  taste  for  mechanics 
in  general,  but  a  very  clearly  specialized  taste  for  mechanical 
engineering  in  particular. 

Thus  of  these  72  men,  21  produced  24  engines  before  reach- 
ing their  17th  year.  Two  others  made  them  during  the  17th 
year.  The  uniformity  here  is  emphasized  by  comparison  with 
the  remainder  of  the  lists  which  show  such  great  variety.  Even 
the  boat,   which  as  we  have  seen  in  the  preceding  chapter  is   so 


68  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

decidedly  the  standard  project  of  the  average  boy,  falls  far  be- 
hind the  engine  here :  (boats  i6,  engines  24). 

The  conclusion  seems  justified — on  the  safe  assumption  that 
modern  environment  has  not  so  changed  as  to  prevent  it — that 
nearly  1-3  (29  or  32  per  cent)  of  the  boys  who  are  to  attain  the 
rank  of  these  men  as  engineers  will  make  steam  engines  before 
their  17th  year.  Further  than  this,  the  writer  knows  of  not  a 
single  case  outside  of  this  list  where  such  a  thing  has  occurred; 
and  until  he  locates  at  least  one  case  in  which  a  man  in  another 
profession  or  a  less  successful  machinist  has  during  boyhood 
succeeded  with  this  same  piece  of  work,  he  cannot  but  assume 
that  the  making  of  a  steam  engine  by  a  boy  before  the  age  of  17 
is  proof  positive  that  the  boy  is  destined  to  become  an  engineer 
and  to  obtain  a  rank  correspondmg  to  that  of  the  men  in  this 
class.  So  that  what  we  might  call  the  "steam  engine''  test 
would  seem  both  to  be  any  boy's  passport  into  this  class  and  to 
be  a  means  of  picking  in  advance  from  a  fourth  to  a  third  of  its 
future  members. 

The  first  list  of  work,  in  addition  to  the  work  of  these  21 
engine  builders,  includes  projects  made  by  11  others  which  in 
their  peculiar  mechanical  appeal,  and  in  the  difficulties  of 
their  construction  suggest  machinery-interests  and  machinery- 
talent  of  almost  if  not  quite  an  equal  grade. 

That  only  six  men  mention  electrical  work  of  any  sort  seems 
surprising.  However,  during  the  boyhood  of  most  of  them 
electricity  was  but  little  in  use  except  for  the  telegraph.  It  is 
interesting  to  note  also  that  boys  generally  at  the  present  time 
appear  to  take  much  less  interest  in  electrical  than  in  steam 
toys,  as  evidenced  by  the  far  greater  demand  for  the  latter  as 
premiums  from  the  publishers  of  the  Youths  Companion.^  The 
seond  list  includes  the  more  ordinary  toys  and  things  useful  in 
play  and  sport.  These  are  the  kind  of  things  which  any  boy 
might  try  to  make,  though  success  with  a  number  of  them,  such 
as  rowboats,  bicycle,  tricycle,  violin,  etc.,  would  indicate  much 
more  than  average  constructive  ability. 

List  (c),  containing  the  articles  for  real  use,  is  seen  to  be 
rather  smaller  than  either  of  the  others  but  by  far  the  most 
varied— which  was  the  case  with  the  school  children's  work. 

^Pedagogical  Seminary,  Vol.  6,  p.  650. 


OF  CHILDREN  69 

Seven  men  represented  only  in  these  two  last  lists  record 
work  (bicycle,  house,  barn,  etc.)  of  a  type  which  seems  to 
justify  placing  them  with  the  32  in  the  first  list  ^so  far  as  excep. 
tional  constructive  ability  of  a  general  sort  is  concerned.  Their 
work  differs  only  in  its  failure  to  indicate  that  taste  for  engines 
and  machinery  which  is  an  equally  prominent  characteristic  of 
the  wo rk'^re corded  in  the  first  list. 

Of  the  lawyers,  one  built  a  model  of  Caesar's  bridge  across 
the  Rhine,  and  another  printed  a  school  paper.  Three  report 
*'no  handwork  at  all,''  one  "recalls  none''  and  three  leave  the 
space  blank. 

The  comparison  of  the  work  of  these  72  engineers  with  that 
of  the  63  school  boys  already  studied,  is  somewhat  interesting 
though  not  wholly  fair  to  the  latter,  since  their  reports  were  on 
all  the  handwork  done  in  one  year  while  the  engineers  doubt- 
less picked  out  the  three  or  four  most  worthy  efforts  of  their 
whole  boyhood.     The  facts  are  too  obvious  to  require  comment. 


I.  Machinery  &  II.  III.  Utility     "Vitality" 

Mechanical  Class     Toy  Class  Class  element 


Engineers,  ages,  8-16       35%  34%  31%  84% 

Schoolboys    "     8-14         o  59%  31%  33% 

To  sum  up  the  facts  indicated  by  the  handwork  of  the  mechani- 
cal engineers  of  this  age  and  rank : 

At  least  79  per  cent  did  more  or  less  constructive  work  be- 
fore reaching  the  age  of  17. 

Fifty-four  per  cent  did  such  work  as  proves  the  possession 
during  boyhood  of  decidedly  exceptional  constructive  ability. 

Forty-four  per  cent  of  the  whole,  or  4-5  of  this  talented 
section,  did  work  which  indicates  that  this  talent  and  their 
tastes  already  possessed  a  decided  bent  towards  machine  con- 
struction. 

Thirty  per  cent  of  all  built  steam  engines,  thus  proving 
and  defining  in  a  peculiarly  distinct  and  conclusive  way  both  an 
already  developed  taste  for  mechanical  engineering   as  such  and 


70  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

their  possession  during  boyhood  of  very  exceptional  talent  for  it. 

It  would  seem  quite  possible  that  a  comparison  of  the  con- 
structive work  of  these  men  with  their  relative  rank  within  the 
group,  might  develop  some  very  interesting  facts;  i.  e.,  most  of 
the  engines  might  prove  to  have  been  made  by  the  more  eminent 
half  of  the  group.  Unfortunately,  however,  it  has  not  been 
posisble  to  procure  such  a  ranking  according  to  ability  as  would 
make  this  possible. 

The  question  regarding  the  influence  of  their  boyhood  con- 
structive work  upon  choice  of  occupation  and  success  therein 
was  poorly  stated  and  the  answers  are  not  always  clear,  but  are 
sufficiently  so  to  indicate  great  variety  of  opinion.  Some 
assert  positively  that  it  was  a  very  important  factor  in  both, 
some  that  it  had  no  influence  in  either  respect,  being  entirely 
an  effect  rather  than  a  cause.  Some  assign  it  a  decided  in- 
fluence upon  choice  alone,  some  upon  success  alone. 
The  following  are^a  few  examples  : 

"If  I  put  it  in  dollars,  would  estimate  that  each  of  the  six 
years  of  manual  labor  as  a  boy  (age  10.17  years)  was  worth  to 
me  ^100,000."  "It  had  everything  to  do  with  both."  "To 
the  fullest  extent."  "Yes,  it  determined  the  whole  course  of 
my  professional  life.  It  made  the  making  of  things  second 
nature."  "Not  much  in  the  choice  but  materially  in  the  suc- 
cess." "It  undoubtedly  caused  me  to  take  up  mechanical  work 
as  a  profession. "  "The  work  was  an  effect  not  a  cause  :  was  a 
manifestation  of  my  natural  tendencies."  '' I  do  not  imagine 
that  it  had  any  influence."     "Not  in  the  slightest,"  etc. 

All  told,  there  are  22  who  assert  its  influence  upon  choice 
against  13  who  deny  such  influence,  and  18  who  think  it  affected 
their  success  against  11  who  think  the  contrary.  Of  course  the 
weight  to  be  given  to  these  opinions  is  largely  a  matter  of  specu- 
lation, but  the  fact  that  strong  majorities  affirm  the  influence  of 
this  work  may  have  some  significance  if  the  writer's  view  is 
correct  that  people  generally  find  it  very  difficult  to  look  upon 
any  one  influence  or  phase  of  environment  as  a  determining 
factor  in  after  life. 


OF   CHILDREN  7« 

Opinions  Regarding  the  Value  of  Manual  Training 

Sixty-six  engineers  approve  of  handwork  in  the  elementary 
school  and  two  disapprove  of  it.  Forty-two  of  them  responded 
by  letters  of  from  one  hundred  to  eight  hundred  words  in  length, 
which  contain  facts  and  suggestions  of  great  interest,  some  of 
which  seem  to  have  rather  direct  bearing  upon  school  practice. 
While  ten  of  them  mention  the  traditional  values,  such  as 
manual  skill,  moral  training,  etc.,  the  value  most  emphasized  is 
the  assistance  which  it  might  give  a  boy  in  finding  his  proper 
work.     The  following  are  a  few  typical  extracts  : — 

(i)  I  believe  thoroughly  in  having  a  work-shop  connected 
with  the  public  school,  as  I  think  it  helps  very  much  to  develop 
latent  talent. 

(2)  It  may  develop  some  talent  which  would  otherwise 
be  hidden. 

(3)  I  have  noted  in  my  many  years  experience  that  very 
young  boys  usually  have  a  preference  for  some  special  line  of  in- 
vestigation which  if  encouraged  and  properly  directed  may  cause 
them  to  develop  into  remarkable  men.  If  a  young  man  fails  to 
select  or  be  guided  in  his  preference  until  past  a  certain  age,  he 
is  liable  to  become  lost  and  entirely  at  sea  with  no  definite  ob- 
ject in  view,  and  finally  takes  up  the  first  thing  that  presents 
itself,   regardless  of  his  fitness  for  that  line  of  work. 

(4)  Of  the  opinion  that  the  elementary  schools  like  the 
older  schools  should  give  opportunities  for  developing  the 
natural  gifts  or  likings  of  the  child,  and  further  that  forcing 
children  to  do  that  for  which  they  have  no  gifts  or  likings  does 
not  do  so  very  much  good  — beyond  the  few  things  they  will  al- 
ways regret  not  knowing  in  af'^erlife,  notably  the  "Three  R's. " 

(5)  I  believe  that  the  importance  of  handwork  of  a  great 
variety  and  wide  range  of  character  is  greater  in  education  than 
has  ever  even  been  claimed.  The  object  of  it  should  be  to  give 
the  pupil  real  experience  in  the  work  of  his  life  while  he  is  still 
in  school. 

It  is  clear  that  work  aiming  in  any  large  way  at  this  "de- 
velopment of  latent  talent"  must  necessarily  be  work  "of  great 
variety  and  wide  range  of  character"  and  in  the  writer's  opinion 
it  is  the  lack  of  this  and  the  consequent  relative  inefificiency 
toward  this  end  that  is  one  of  the  most  serious  faults  of  school 
handwork,  as  generally  carried  on.     This    is    in  effect  the  criti- 


72  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

cism  of   one  of  the  two  engineers  to   decline  to   indorse   such 
school  work.     He  says: 

I  have  been  fairly  successful  in  my  mechanical  career, 
but  I  never  could  have  been  a  success  in  a  manual  training 
school  as  my  natural  craving  for  large  things  would  have  made 
it  impossible  for  me  to  have  applied  myself. 

The  only  other  point  emphasized  with  any  unanimity  con- 
cerned the  relation  of  early  observation  to  mechanical  achieve- 
ment. The  experiences  related  by  six  men  would  seem  to  contain 
suggestions  for  the  school  that  are  of  very  great  importance. 
To  quote  from  the  letters  of  some  of  them : 

(i)  My  actual  work  was  undoubtedly  an  incentive  to  apply 
my  decided  taste  for  mechanical  work  later,  but  it  was  rather 
watching  mechanics  at  their  work  that  led  me  on.  For  in- 
stance, though  I  have  not  at  all  observed  the  operations  care- 
fully since  I  was,  say  ten  years  old,  I  know  I  could  fit  a  horse- 
shoe  or  set  a  buggy  tire  to-day  now  that  I  am  strong  enough, 
though  I  learned  Jioiv  it  was  done  then.  When  I  came  to  fire 
and  run  a  locomotive  and  work  at  locomotive  repairs,  it  was  a 
good  deal  like  harnessing  a  horse  you  had  seen  harnessed  a 
hundred  times,  ...  I  spent  my  boyhood  time  in  such  ways 
constantly — whole  days  in  engine  rooms  of  mills,  etc. — but  I 
actually  made  and  finished  few  things  of  importance,  if  any 
.....  I  vote  for  anything  that  will  develop  "mechanical  in- 
tuition;" and  watching  and  thinking  and  trying  to  do  this. 

(2)  (After  indorsing  the  manual  training  idea  in  a  general 
way).  .  .  in  my  own  case,  I  feel  that  my  constant  love  for  see- 
ing machinery  at  work,  and  learning  by  questioning  and  obser- 
vation the  what  and  why  of  things  had  most  to  do  with  my  tak- 
ing up  engineering. 

(3)  I  was  fond  of  watching  the  machinists  in  the  factory 
and  spent  as  much  time  there  as  I  was  allowed,  with  the  result 
of  quickening  my  power  of  observation  until  I  had  the  faculty  of 
carrying  in  my  mind  complex  mechanisms. 

(4)  We  need  practical  men,  to  be  sure,  and  there  are  char- 
acters which  are  distinctly  mechanics.  These  must  practice  the 
mechanical  arts  and  must  take  delight  in  the  execution  of  work. 
The  future  engineer  needs  no  such  dexterity  ....  What  I  con- 
sider of  eminent  importance  for  the  future  engineer  would  be 
much  observation  especially  if  it  can  be  done  under  a  competent 
teacher.  With  a  bright  student  this  develops  into  a  comprehen. 
siveness  that  can  never  be  over- valued. 


OF  CHILDREN  73 

These  replies  seem  to  the  writer  to  suggest  a  very  strong 
possibility  that  the  "school  excursion"  properly  developed  and 
systematized  might  become  in  the  case  of  at  least  a  few  children, 
the  most  broadly  determining  factor  in  their  elementary  educa- 
tion. 

It  may  seem  surprising  that  none  make  any  allusion  tC'  the 
place  of  mechanical  drawing  as  a  school  subject.  Two,  how- 
ever, speak  of  freehand  drawing  as  follows : 

(i)  I  think  freehand  drawing  ....  very  important  as  it 
teaches  a  boy  to  express  his  conceptions  clearly.  I  think 
everyone  should  be  taught  to  draw,  just  as  to  write,  although 
only  those  of  natural  talent  can  become  either  great  authors  or 
great  artists. 

(2)  I  believe  drawing  the  most  important  of  all.  Nothing 
helps  architect,  engineer,  mechanic,  more  than  the  ability  to 
sketch  rapidly  his  ideas  on  paper. 

The  following  from  a  man  eminently  successful  both  as  en- 
gineer and  manufacturer,  is  perhaps  the  most  comprehensive  of 
all  the  letters  received: 

I  have  no  experience  in  teaching — only  in  using  those  who 
have  been  taught.  My  ideas  so  far  as  they  go  on  this  subject 
are  about  as  follows : 

1.  Manual  training  and  constructive  work  should  be 
taught  and  be  as  conipiilsory  as  arithmetic  from  the  kindergarten 
up  to a  certain  point  which  seems  to  vary  with  each  in- 
dividual and  can  only  be  "stabbed  at''  by  the  careful  and  indi- 
vidual attention  of  the  teacher. 

2.  The  point  to  stop  manual  training  as  a  part  of  the  en. 
forced  curriculum  and  let  it  become  elective,  may  be  some- 
where short  of  the  high  school,  and  I  think  it  is. 

3.  Manual  training  is  as  natural  and  necessary  to  the 
humans  as  hiding  or  running  or  chasing  is  to  the  wild  animal's 
young.  All  humans  need  some  of  it.  Some  humans  need  and 
benefit  greatly  by  a  lot  of  it,  while  others  need  it  to  a  certain 
point  beyond  which  it  is   an  absolute  waste  and  injury  to  them. 

This  is  the  only  definite  recognition  of  the  importance  of 
opportunity  in  the  school  to  specialize  away  from  as  well  as 
toward  mechanics. 

The  two  who  refuse  indorsement  to  school  handwork  write 
as  follows: 

(i)  Notwithstanding  my  love  for  mechanical  work  and  en- 
gineering,  I  do  not  favor  instruction    in   manual   operations   in 


74  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

schools  or  colleges,  believing  that  the  time  can  be  spent  to  much 
better  advantage  in  the  ordinary  course  of  study.  This  does  not, 
of  course,  apply  to  manual  training  schools,  where  special  in. 
struction  is  given  in  some  particular  trade  or  occupation  which 
the  student  proposes  to  pursue  as  a  life  work. 

(2)  I  have  never  been  opposed  to  handiwork  as  taught  in 
manual  training  schools,  but  I  have  never  been  in  favor  of  it. 
I  consider  it  of  very  little  value.  I  believe  that  any  boy  in- 
clined toward  the  mechanic  arts  will  find  a  way  to  satisfy  his 
cravings  in  the  most  practical  manner.  ...  I  consider  the 
workshops  cf  the  nation  the  best  mechanical  training  schools; 
in  them  the  science  is  "up  to  date"  and  everything  is  conducted 
on  a  plane  relative  to  the  commercial  value  of  the  product. 


Educational  Applications 

The  value  of  this  study  to  education  is  in  the  light  it  may  be 
thought  to  yield  on  these  two  questions,  (i)  How — if  at  all, 
may  the  boy  of  exceptional  mechanical  talent  be  recognized  as 
such  during  boyhood }  (2)  When  recognized,  what  special 
education  should  be  permitted  or  encouraged  during  boyhood  ?^ 

Regarding  the  first  we  have  the  following  facts :  Of  72 
leading  enginers,  83  per  cent  took  great  interest  in  mechanical 
work,  57  per  cent  admit  exceptional  ability  therein,  most  of 
them  (and  some  others  who  made  it  not)  substantiating  this  ad- 
mission by  records  of  work  done.  Forty-four  per  cent  report 
work  which  shows  exceptional  talent  for  and  interest  in 
machinery,  while  30  per  cent  made  actual  steam  engines. 
Science  was  a  study  liked  by  72  per  cent  and  thoroughly  dis- 
liked by  none.  Literature  was  the  favorite  study  with  only  one 
and  the  least  favored  by  49.  Arithmetic,  geography  and  his- 
tory, each  rank  definitely  as  second,  third  and  fourth  re- 
spectively. Ability  in  these  studies  runs  closely  parallel  to 
taste.     Comparatively   few  (12  per  cent)  were  good   all-around 

^C£.  Galton:  "We  may  therefore  rest  assured  that  the  possession  of  a 
strong  special  talent  is  a  precious  capital  and  that  it  is  a  wicked  waste  of 
national  power  to  thwart  it  ruthlessly  by  a  false  system  of  education.  But 
I  can  give  no  test  which  shall  distinguish  between  a  taste  that  is  destined  to 
endure  and  a  passing  fancy,  further  than  by  remarking  than  whenever  the 
aptitudes  seem  hereditary  they  deserve  special  consideration." 

English  Men  of  Science,  p.  196. 


OF  CHILDREN  75 

Students,  most  01  them  showing  no  special  abilities  except 
mechanics,  science  and  mathematics,  and  very  little  interest  in 
other  matters— in  anything  pertaining  to  literature,  history  or 
art. 

The  agreement  within  the  sub-groups  is  such  as  to  justify 
the  assumption  that  all  these  statements  would  hold  true  in  a 
general  way  for  any  chance  group  of  more^than  twenty  engineers 
of  the  same  rank,  provided  their  boyhood  occurred  during  the 
same  period,  — and  it  seems  safe  to  assume  further  that  they 
would  apply  to  those  boys  of  thejjresent  time  who  are  destined 
to  become  engineers  of  that  rank. 

As  to  whether  these  are  facts  peculiar  to  engineers,  we  have 
only  partial  evidence.  They  are  seen  to  be  flatly  contradicted 
by  the  boyhood  characteristics  of  talented  lawyers  in  every  case 
except  the  one  of  city  rearing.  A  study  of  other  professions  is 
needed. 

On  the  whole,  it  would  appear  that  we  might  select  in  ad- 
vance something  like  half  of  the  future  engineers  of  this  grade; 
at  least  one-fourth,  by  the  "steam  engine  test''  alone,  another 
fourth  perhaps  by  consideration  of  their  general  mechanical  and 
scientific  interests,  abilities  and  the  exclusiveness  of  these. ^ 

On  the  question  of  the  early  specialization  to  be  allowed 
such  boys,  there  are  these  facts:— Eighty-four  per  cent  of  the 
engineers  had  during  boyhood  a  considerable  contact  with 
things  mechanical,  6^  per  cent  had  contact  with  machinery  and 
50  per  cent  with  the  machine  shop  itself,  (though  42  per  cent  of 
the  fathers  were  in  non-mechanical  occupations).  Only  21  per 
cent  were  reared  on  the  farm  and  four-fifths  of  this  farm  group 
mention  more  definite  contact  with  machinery  than  the  farm 
itself  afforded. 

Nearly  all  approve  of  school  handwork  most  often  on  the 
ground  of  its  assistance  in  developing  "latent  talent,"  this  aim 
seeming  to  involve  the  demand  expressed  by  some  that  it  should 
be  work  of  great  variety.     This  great  variety  may   not  be  easily 

^The  records  considered  make  it  sufficiently  evident  that  talented 
engineers  as  a  rule  do  not  have  during  boyhood  that  great  variety  of  succes- 
sive and  equally  absorbing  interests  which  would  seem  to  belong  to  the 
boyhood  of  talented  psychologists,  if  the  boyhood  of  Professor  Miinsterberg 
is  considered  a  typical  one  for  that  profession. 

(See  Atlantic  Monthly,  May,  1899.) 


76  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

obtainable  in  schools  generally  and  indeed  might  not  be  so  de- 
sirable except  for  this  type  of  boy.  However,  it  would  seem  at 
least  that  this  boy  might  well  be  encouraged  to  strike  out  on 
lines  perhaps  impracticable  for  the  bulk  of  the  class,  instead  of 
following^^a  narrow  and  prescribed  course.  It  would  seem  that 
shops  of  the  elementary  school  should  be  provided  with  a  special 
equipment  including  such  things  as  foot  lathes,  small  forge, 
anvil,  crucibles,  etc.,  to  furnish  such  boys  opportunities  for 
the  range  of  work  demanded  by  their  abilities  and  interests. 

Their  emphasis  upon  the  value  of  observation  as  equal  if 
not  superior  to  that  of  actual  work,  would  suggest  a  responsi. 
bility  on  the  part  of  the  teacher  for  making  possible  and  en- 
couraging such  boys  (if  not  the  whole  class)  to  spend  a  large 
amount  of  time  in  such  shops  and  factories. 

As  to  the  regular  school  work  of  such  boys  it  appears  that 
they  took  little  interest  in  such  subjects  as  literature  and  his- 
tory, and  were  consequently  weak  in  them.  Not  one  ex- 
presses any  personal  gratitude  felt  in  later  years  that  he  was 
forced  to  do  this  work  — though  two  or  three  do  speak  in 
more  general  terms  of  the  value  of  being  made  to  study  hard  at 
things  regardless  of  preferences.  One,  recording  his  weakness 
in  history,  says,  "I  had  great  difficulty  with  such  work  as 
Roman  history  that  I  could  see  no  use  in"  ;  and  other  replies 
already  quoted  imply  hearty  belief  in  the  value  of  early  speciali- 
zation, with  little  fear  of  its  consequences.  On  the  whole,  such 
specialization  would  seem  advantageous  for  this  type  of  talent 
and  rank  of  ability. 


Summary 

On  ,the  psychological  side  this  study  furnishes  nothing 
more  than  a  quantitative  statement  of  interests  the  existence  of 
which  was  already  fully  recognized.  We  know,  for  example, 
from  common  observation  that  small  boys  like  to  make  things 
merely  for  the  sake  of  making  them.  But  the  figures  under 
play-imitation  measure  this  as  a  "20  per  cent  interest"  just 
before  the  twelfth  year  and  less  than  a  5  per  cent  interest  after 
it.  It  is  further  shown  that  at  the  age  of  ten  years,  four-fifths 
of  a  boy's  play  construction  has  passed  beyond  the  stage  of  mere 
play,  and  aims  at  an  ulterior  purpose  of  some  sort.  This  pur- 
pose is  more  often  connected  with  play  than  otherwise.  The 
close  agreement  in  these  cases  between  the  records  of  the  two 
schools  taken  separately  seems  a  sufficient  basis  for  assuming 
that  the  estimates  given  are  not  far  from  correct. 

While  these  figures  have  little  direct  practical  application 
to  school  work,  the  lists  of  articles  given  sugi^est  specific  pro- 
jects for  school  handwork  and  give  an  idea  of  their  relative 
popularity  with  children.  With  reference  to  the  record  of  girls' 
work  little  need  be  said,  as  the  interests  there  suggested  are 
well  recognized  in  many  schools.  With  the  boys  it 
is  seen  that  there  is  much  variety  in  the  play- imita- 
tion class,  the  class  which  belongs  mainly  to  boys 
under  eleven  years.  This  would  imply  that  the  selection  of  a 
subject  for  work  is  not  a  matter  of  serious  importance  at  this 
age;  that  any  common  occupation  or  object  may  be  taken 
indifferently,  and  that  any  phase  either  of  primitive  or  of 
modern  life  which  can  be  brought  in  a  vivid  way  before  chil- 
dren will  stimulate  initiative  construction.  Consequently  hand- 
work need  not  be  made  an  independent  subject,  but  may  pro- 
perly be  subordinated  to  any  line  of  study  which  may  for  other 
reasons  find  place  in  the  curriculum  of  these  years.  The  play- 
utility  list,  on  the  other  hand,  names  only  a  few  objects.  Boats 
alone  make  one-third  of  the  whole,  and  the  next  third  includes 
only  four  other  articles,  animal  contrivances,  wagons,  balls,  and 
houses.     Croswell's  list,  as  has  been  shown,  agrees  exactly  on 


78  THE  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTERESTS 

this  point  except  that  his  colder  winters  cause  sleds  to  take  the 
place  of  animal  contrivances. 

If  the  12.14  year  old  boy  so  regularly  chooses  to  make  these 
things  the  school  should  evidently  recognize  this  interest  as 
far  as  possible— as  far,  that  is,  as  may  be  done  without 
sacrifice  of  educational  ends.  The  teacher  may  well  study  with 
care  the  mechanical  and  constructive  possibilities  of  the  ten  or 
so  objects  which  rank  first  to  discover  how  far  and  how  well  he 
can  utilize  them.  To  the  writer  it  seems  quite  obvious  that  in 
the  making  of  courses  of  study  in  handwork,  much  more  atten- 
tion might  be  given  to  the  interest  of  the  child  than  is  done  at 
present.  Whether  the  aim  uppermost  in  the  mind  of  the  teacher 
is  to  develop  mechanical  ingenuity,  to  vitalize  work  in  physical 
science  or  to  give  a  general  acquaintance  with  typical  industries, 
he  will  find  an  abundance  of  material  adapted  to  his  purpose  in 
the  work  preferred  by  the  child.  For  instance,  repro- 
ductions in  miniature  of  the  boat  or  wagon  may 
appeal  to  the  toy-interest,  and  at  the  same  time  estab- 
lish connections  with  a  large  number  of  industries.  The  prob- 
lem of  motive  power  may  be  introduced  and  suited  accurately  to 
the  age,  ingenuity,  and  attainment  of  the  child;  the  subjects  of 
railroad  and  water  transportation  may  also  be  brought  in  in  this 
connection.  The  vitality  classification  strongly  encourages 
attention  to  motive  power  as  well  as  the  facts  brought  out  in  the 
boyhood  work  of  the  talented  engineers.  Of  course  facts  regard- 
ing a  group  of  such  men  must  not  be  applied  too  generally. 
Still  it  seems  to  the  writer  that  many  of  these  suggestions  for 
the  education  of  the  engineer  would  be  fully  as  applicable  in  the 
case  of  the  mechanic.  The  ordinary  man  whose  best  future  lies 
in  mechanical  work  has  probably  a  less  insistent  craving  for  it 
than  the  future  engineer,  certainly  less  ability  to  push  his  way 
into  it  against  odds.  So  the  opportunity  for  large  variety  of 
work  and  experience  during  boyhood  may  be  even  more  valuable 
to  the  mere  machinist  than  to  the  engineer  in  directing  him  to 
his  proper  field  of  work. 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 

OCT  1  7  '(93i 


4  1955, 


FormL-9-35»i-8,'28 


L3 


1051 
~~K4T 


Aent- 

^^Idrenl 


UCLA-Young   Research    libr 

LB1051    .K41 


L  009  548   165   1 


